On the subject of reference works on Pound: I was considering purchasing _A Companion to Ezra Pound's Cantos_, published by the UC press, 1993, by Carroll Terrell; does anybody have any comments on this work? A browse of it in the bookstore made it seem like a "must have", in some sense, for an understanding of the threads of Pound's historical/literary narratives. This might, I suppose, spark a discussion of the effect a Companion such as the above might have on a reading of the Cantos. Terrell basically runs each Canto line by line, picking out references and quoting relevant texts (primary and secondary). Pound himself didn't have such a rigorously analytical approach to what he brought in, and, given what he does with the traditional academic narrative of literary development in a book such as ABC's of Reading, it seems as if he himself saw Cantos' use of other texts in a far different light than Terrell does. Does, then, in some sense, a Companion actually distance the reader from the text more than a muddle-through-and-get-what-you-can reading? -- Simon DeDeo * <`,'> | Simon DeDeo / Mather 307E (B entry, lowrise) | <`,'> * * [`-'] | 237 Mather Mail Center / Cambridge, MA 02138 | [`-'] * * -"-"- | homepage http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo | -"-"- *