Comment 9 of 10, added on October 31st, 2008 at 4:19 PM.

Well, the language: re-echoing Homer through Divus' Latin translation in
the metre of the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer, this is an example of what
Eliot called "he do the police in different voices" -- re-echoing classic
poetry while making something new. See Guy Davenport's short book Cities
on Hills for some more background on the first 30 Cantos and, don't forget
Terrell's Guide to The Cantos will be very helpful to anyone wishing to
understand the poem while they red it, though most of it can be read
withuot a trot. Even though The Cantos may not represent "an orderly
Dantescan rising," the poem does chart a rise from the dark night of
ignorance toward culture.

Christian Gehman from United States

Comment 7 of 10, added on April 24th, 2007 at 2:00 PM.

i love this so much it is beautiful work u have done here!!!!! ill give u 2
kisses and an apple for that performance!!

Peter Pantsanburg from United States

Comment 5 of 10, added on June 30th, 2005 at 12:02 AM.

I'm not sure what this problem with appreciation of Pound's language is but
perhaps what matt refers to are the lines which start 'Lie quiet Divus'
where narration abruptly shifts from the fragment of Odyssey to a direct
address to one of Renaissance translators of Homer, afterwards, the
narration (changing the narrator) shifts back to Odysseus, then to
Aphrodite and then, there is this famous 'So that' at the end, which, it is
believed was borrowed from 'Sordello' by Robert Browning. This peculiar
non-traditional structure of communication is the effect of application of
the ideogrammatic method, i.e. Pound communicates the meaning trying to
avoid direct naming the object of communication but 'giving it to
understand' in the way he believed Chinese ideograms communicate their
contents, indirectly, suggesting their meaning by the fact of selecting
given objects - Pound gives an example of what he means in 'ABC of Reading'
where he juxtaposes the Western communique of the colour = red; with a
hypothetical Chinese ideogram structure suggesting the meaning through
collection of ideograms of 'rose' 'rust' 'cherry' 'flamingo' in one
ideogram, thus, on one hand, avoiding naming the colour red, and on the
other, giving it to understand. To cut it short, Pound wants to prevent his
communique from becoming 'pseudeto' and become 'aletheia' speaking through
'unhiding'. I do not want to continue further because I do not know whether
I might not be telling things that are already known - if you would specify
the question, I might perhaps be of better service.

Tomasz Pilch from Poland

Comment 3 of 10, added on August 27th, 2004 at 6:18 PM.

I think this is one of Pound's greatest; I think his arrangement is one
that trys to mimic the same sentence sequence that it may have sounded in
the original Greek. The flow of the language is very unusual: it mimics a
"backwards" effect that to me, brings one back in time. He even make a
reference in the poem "the ocean flowing backwards", its like a whirlpool
taking you back through the ages.

Ian G. Morris from Canada

Comment 1 of 10, added on August 18th, 2004 at 9:00 PM.

I really enjoyed the poem. Fantastic use of language. I had no idea Pound
was a modernist; I only know of him through reading T.S. Eliot all summer.
However, in all my reading, I never thought Pound was a man. For some
reason I thought pound was a woman; Ezra sounds more of a woman's name.
The bottom line is the poem is excellent: Extremely beautiful is the
rating I give it.

Christian A. Leng