Hold on, I'm just going to cut n paste a bit of one of my essays, as I think the influence of byron is a little underrated on pound. -snip- The Cantos were begun with a specific Romantic in mind (as well as Browning); at the time he was writing the ur-Cantos Pound was also writing self-consciously Byronic satire, the poem ‘L’Homme Moyen Sensuel’ which in a letter to H.L Mencken he explained (to avoid it being cut): I can’t shorten it any more, and am inclined to think it would be better, as it was in an earlier version, set down looser and longer. Note that the guts of all satire (Don Juan for instance) are in the digressions, a propos de bottes, and that a Don Juan canto is about the shortest length convenient for such digression […] My business instinct, such as it is, makes me think the most advantageous thing all round would be to boom it as THE satire, ‘best since Byron.’ New York is accustomed to a new Keats and a new Shelley once a fortnight and one might vary the note […] As to the best form. A long, really long narrative like Juan is probably the best, but I am perfectly willing to recognise the exigencies of S.S. [Smart set, Mencken’s magazine] and make each rip self-contained, as this one is… Part of the trick is a hurrying rhythm. Byron wrote ‘Beppo’ with an identical aim, a series of loosely linked but self-contained satires, but moved onto Don Juan where the problem of form is gleefully dismissed; what Pound found attractive in this was the perspectives Byron could use within a single poem, the satiric possibilities of having many voices operating in the same text but on different levels. This spontaneity and freedom of form is behind the famous lines Pound was later to preface to ‘Selected Cantos’, originally from Ur-Canto 1: “Say that I dump my catch, shiny and silvery/ as fresh sardines slapping and slipping on the marginal cobbles?”, though after the ur-Cantos were rejected by Pound this satiric element is removed, and the focus moves onto masks as revealers of self and Browning with his “hang it all!”. This creates its own problems within the poetry, as the Romantic tradition into which Sordello falls is one in which the subject of the poem must be special, worthy of elevation above the ordinary, and of course the subject of these initial Cantos was Pound’s search for the form and subject itself, leading to a desperate assertion of vigour in the verse, characterised by Makin as “the vigorous intervention of the poet [everywhere], vigorously seizing scraps of history and giving them imaginative life” It's a bit caught up in it's own righteousness, but i think makes the point about Pound/ Byron better than my earlier post- but I must admit the colossal egos of the two men had never clicked in my head before; need to think about this more. Rich _________________________________________________________________ Find a cheaper internet access deal - choose one to suit you. http://www.msn.co.uk/internetaccess