Professors Moody and Korg,

Pound wrote: "Major form is not a non-literary component. But it can do us no harm to stop for an hour or so and consider the number of very important works of world literature in which form, major form, is remarkable for [its] absence.”

from: ABC of Reading (if I recall correctly....)

Also: Writing to his father in 1927, two years after A Draft of XVI Cantos was published, Pound admitted:

Afraid the whole damn poem is rather obscure, especially in fragments. Have I ever given you outline of main scheme...or whatever it is?
    1. Rather like, or unlike subject and response and  counter subject in fugue.
    A.A. Live man goes down into world of Dead
    C.B. The “repeat in history”
B.C. The “magic moment” or moment of metamorphosis burst thru quotidien into “divine or permanent world.” (Selected Letters, 210)

I must disagree with Mr. Moody concerning the presence of "major form" in The Cantos--Allen Tate's early and late essays on the poem being rather instructive in that regard. Also, I highly recommend R. P Blackmur's essay on the subject, contained in Form & Value in Modern Poetry.

Regards,
Garrick Davis
editor
Contemporary Poetry Review
www.cprw.com