The Cantos to a surprising extent will teach themselves if the reader lets them. Modern literature was not my emphasis in grad school or since, and when I began in 1956 to read the Cantos on my own there was virtually no critical help available. My method was simply to keep reading here and there making no particular effort to follow or 'decode' as I went along. It wasn't long before a passage here or there came alive. Some for obvious reasons: (quoted from memory) In the gloom the gold gathers the light against it If the hoarfrost grip thy tent, Thou wilt give thanks when night is spent The enormous tragedy of the dream in the peasant's bent shoulders And yet say this to the Possum, with a bang not a whimper [this is incorrect, but somethigng like that] Lord of his word and master of utterance He turneth his word in its season and shape sit [again,not quite right I think[ [Complete paraphrase -- Van Buren spefaking] I'm told that speech was not a triumph of clarity. [Look this up, Canto 37? 39? It's a really fine passage.] --- Then after a year or so passages began to adhere to each other, and one could move back and forth through the poem finding passages which one way or another echoed each other. Then long passages in the Adams cantos or in the Pisan Cantos began to come alive, both in themslves and echoing other parts of the poem. The poem begins to take shape (as Pound predicts here and there: some passage, for example, about the waves taking shape and freezing] And so forth. It's a voyage of discovery for the reader, and even if many passages remain opaque, still it is a wonderful voyage. Carrol ' Michael Scott wrote: > > i came late to office life but found that a regular lunch hour gave me > an opportunity to read fat books slowly > > so - in keeping with the times - i've begun on The Cantos > > if no one objects i'm going to treat this list as my oracle - here's > the first lazy question > > the initial pages read like a ticker tape parade of history - are > there fictional characters of Pound's own making in the Cantos - or is > every name i meet someone i could go look up on Wikipedia