Carlo Parcelli wrote: >My use of the notion of "arcane" was meant to be in contra-distinction to >yours. Understood. I meant to give an example of something that was both arcane and, paradoxically, all too relevant. With the example of "statistical probabilities", following upon your example of Nash, the point I hoped to make was that the poet who would use these mathematical facts of contemporary life as the subject of an epic poem would do better to devise a way of presenting the subject *dramatically*. Rather than holding up the "raw and undigested" technicalities themselves, such as by embedding the mathematical formulae into the work, or by alluding to Nash (for sake of example) or quoting from his works, the poet should attempt to show their *effects*. This is, of course, merely an opinion of mine. I happen to think Pound is at his best when he finds a way to dramatize. >[...] with the rise of hundreds of scientific and technical specialties not >to mention specialties outside of these two general disciplines we have >"arcana", >if you will, which profoundly effect the utility of our everyday lives. In >large >part Pound sought, mistakenly, a return to a culture not as reliant on >'specialties.' Not sure I would put it exactly that way, but yes, Pound sought to return to a culture organized around crafts and trades where the principle of *individual workmanship* still had meaning. I doubt he would have thought too highly of the work of someone who measured the probabilities of 50-year weather patterns to arrive at a trading price for puts and calls on degree-day insurance policies and weather derivatives. >I [...] sought to put myself in the center of the concern for the everyday >arcana that >is science and technology. Your email seems to suggest that to engage this >arcana >in its original forms violates some sort of communication with the poetry >reader. >Let's leave aside the obligation of the reader because, generally, this is one >'obligation' the reader has no intention of meeting. Isn't there a typo above? Didn't you mean to write "obligation *to* the reader..." ? Or did you? "Of" or "to" -- is the crux of the issue. Thinking of the poet's obligation *to* the reader, I wrote that the poet must subordinate exposition to drama. Not because difficult "technical" subjects are not valid subjects for poetry -- the effects of science and technology upon our lives is, of course, a valid subject for poetry-- but should readers *of poetry* find themselves reading a primer on statistical methods? Poems and primers both may instruct; poem must also *delight*. Or do you have in mind a modern equivalent to, say, those ancient poems, little more than mnemonic devices really, that seek to fix in the memory arcane (yet relevant!) lore on the medicinal powers of plants and stones? Tim Romano