Ben: If you're having trouble with Cavalcanti, then you're not alone! Pound himself struggled for most of his adulthood with Cavalcanti's poetry, hence the many attempts he made with one canzone in particular--an entire book came out a few years ago documenting this struggle. As regards the figure of Amor, remember that the gender trouble comes from the fact that in the European middle ages Amor was a pagan concept (Cupid and Venus) translated into a Christian concept (Christ's love). This sort of difficulty shouldn't discourage you--as you no doubt by now know, much of the difficulty in Pound's poetry is simply a matter of not knowing the languages and histories. You might remember that Pound was neither a linguist nor a historian (even his Italian wasn't quite perfect), which leaves you, the reader, with a good deal of control in the reading process. At one point Pound (I think 1939) wrote that the foreign languages in the Cantos were a form of emphasizing ideas that appear elsewhere, so you can proceed without the Italian, Chinese, etc. My approach is to read once without worrying about what I don't know, and then go back to identify and solve problems. Nice work if you can get it... Jonathan Gill Columbia University