laura and jeff wrote: > > how did everyone become interested in pound? > myself: > my love of poetry eventually (and i'd think quite naturally) led me to him > at a young age (as i have already refered to). > just interested. > jeff. Josephine Miles at Berkeley introduced me to Pound in her Lyric Poetry class about 1963. I was intrigued with _Homage to Sextus Propertius_, especially the political element. I found the _Cantos_ baffling, and put them off till my old age, when I promised myself to undertake the _Cantos_, the Mahabharata, and to try to solve the second Zodiac cipher. I'm an aging computer programmer getting ready to retire. The Companion is indispensable for me, and I can only marvel at you guys who are at home with the Cantos without it. I belong to a small group of poetry readers. We meet regularly and practice reading the repertoire. Our own stuff is forbidden. The idea is to learn how to read a poem, and how to perform it out loud. The group's reaction to Pound was interesting. I thought it best to introduce the _Cantos_ with XLVI because it is a sort of summing up. It sounded familiar because it sounded like our fathers or uncles ranting about current events. That was the group's assessment. The discussion was lively. I also provided handouts on the money system, the Feds, and banking that I culled from the saner posters to sci.econ. This was not the case for Canto II which I tried next. The allusions to Bacchus and Ovid were too much for the group's immediate appreciation. I had read Ovid in Berkeley long ago so the story was not so strange to me. There was no animated discussion afterwards. And I had picked Canto II on purpose for not being so difficult!