Burt Hatlen wrote: > The critical debate will be banal and > unproductive until we can talk about the retrograde social and > political views AND the astonishing inventiveness of the poetry, AT > THE SAME TIME. When I joined this list a couple weeks ago I at first thought it was that kind of debate I had come upon. The choosing up of sides seems unproductive. It is unproductive even in respect to the "retrograde social and political views," which are an interesting jumble if looked at independently of a lust to defend or attack. Moreover, it seems to me that the "astonishing inventiveness of the poetry" is not independent from the struggle to control and order that jumble which the poem registers. And moreover the very existence of such a poem as the *Cantos* -- or rather the possibility of its existence -- poses interesting historical and literary issues, issues again which are difficult to explore in the context of choosing up sides in an intellectual hockey match. Carrol