Dear Everett Lee
 
Just to set the record straight... I live in Woodstock, NY,
NOT Australia. Am here writing the third and final play of a
trilogy of plays about the artist in contemporary society. The
first play - SIXTEEN WORDS FOR WATER - is about Pound.
The second - ESIENSTEIN IN MEXICO - is about Sir Gay
(Eisenstein). And the third is about Soutine. (sort of).
 
Thanks for your comments. You can read Part one of a
long article I have written about Pi O at Suite101.com
http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/performance_poetry
It is posted now... though the juiciest part (re: Pi
and Pound) comes in Part two, which will be posted in a
fortnight or so.
 
I have not seen THE LIMEY, I confess, but I am sure it
is not any more fugue-like than many many films I could
call your attention to... Schpesi's Devil's Playground comes
to mind. But there is no need to compile lists... what
we are really talking about is an articulate subtext of
images... the saying through the unsaid... the creation
of the work of art as if it is happening NOW in the eye,
ear, mind of the beholder - the essential meaning of the
idea "Make It New" - through a kind of creative hiding.
It seems to me that thisis the lesson of Modernism,
if one must speak in terms of lessons.
 
Stoneking
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Everett Lee Lady <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 1999 7:33 PM
Subject: Re: Montage and Reading the Cantos
 
 
> >> "But the true test of one's
> >> understanding, in my opinion, would be to reach the point where one has
> >> absorbed the work and understood Pound's thinking so thoroughly that
one
> >> can use his innovations as the basis for creating new work.  It seems
in
> >> some respects rather discouraging that the first person to succeed in
> >> this task has been a filmmaker rather than a writer."
> >
> >You obviously do not have Stalin's love of movies, but awonderful sense
of
> >hyberbole and the absurb. Mr Soderbergh, the first?  I don't think so...
> >let us nominate Eisenstein if anyone, though I suspect you pass him by
> >more from the techincal deficicies of film at that period (compared to
now).
> >But this was a simultaneous evolution. Eisenstein was NOT influenced by
> >Pound or vice versa.
> >
> >If you wanna start nominating film directors why overlook Ford (The
> >Searchers),
> >or Mr Hitchcock (the "Pound" of suspense), or dare I say it? Ingmar
> >Bergmann.
> >And there are more.
>
> Have you actually seen THE LIMEY?  Do make a point of seeing it when it
> finally gets to Australia.
>
> Thanks for the referrals to John Ford and Ingmar Bergman.  I've never
> looked at their films from the point of view of noticing the editing.
> References to specific Bergman films would be appreciated.
> (Incidentally, John Ford worked in an era when directors did not have
> control over the editing of their films; the editor was responsible to
> the studio, not to the director.  However unlike most directors of the
> classical Hollywood period, Ford did not provide ample "coverage" for
> his scenes, so the film had to be edited pretty much the way Ford
> wanted it because those were the only shots the editor had to choose
> among.)
>
> Others, including myself, have previously mentioned Eisenstein and
> Hitchcock in connection with the Cantos.  In particular, I will mention
> again the famous shower scene in psycho, where Hitchcock put together
> something like 175 different shots to produce about 45 seconds worth of
> screen time and was able to effectively show a murder in a shower without
> using any explicit violence or nudity.  This is certainly a lot like
> Pound's technique in the Cantos.
>
> However Soderbergh's film THE LIMEY is like the Cantos in some ways that
> Hitchcock and Eisenstein are not.  For one thing, there is the fugue-like
> way that certain images keep recurring.  Soderbergh is certainly not the
> first to do this, either in film or written narration, but I think he
> carries it to an extreme that few other writers and directors have.
>
> The more important point, though, is that editing such as that in
> Hitchcock's shower scene is still much more linear than what Pound does
> in the Cantos.  In reading the Cantos, in many ways one has to give up
> one's attachment to logic as the imagery shifts thousands of miles and
> hundreds of years without any apparent justification.  And Soderbergh
> does the same sort of thing in THE LIMEY, which is probably one of the
> reasons it has not been all that successful at the box office.
>
> Two characters are having a conversation in a kitchen and then, as one
> continues to hear one of the characters talking, there is a shift to a
> non-speaking close up image of that same character.  And then
> as the conversation continues, there is an image of the other character
> sitting in an airline seat, and then a shift to both characters riding
> together in a car, but still continuing the same conversation.  To me,
> anyway, it seems that the demands Soderbergh is making of the viewer
> are very like the demands Pound makes on his readers.
>
> >Writers?  PiO in Melbourne has developed a rigrous and original poetry of
> >inner-city Melbourne migrants utilising voice and dialect in a way that
> >Pound (by comparison) only hinted at, and yet Pi's poetry is very
definitely
> >a major innovation that has its source in Pound's poetry. The list of
poets
> >is in fact endless!
>
> Thanks for the tip.  I'll try to get around to learning about Pi
> eventually.
>
> --Lee Lady   <Http://www2.Hawaii.Edu/~lady>
>