If you can’t see the lengthy update I posted tonight regarding our discussions of Pound, and my own thoughts on the Cantos we’ve studied so far (Nos. I – VIII), it’s because you’re not signed in. Users who have signed up — a quick, free process — can see the big posts on Pound. Others can’t. Most readers probably will be grateful for this effective omission, but for those interested, sign up: it’ll take you but a minute, and you’ll get hours worth of my work for free!

I find that in reading Ezra Pound, the joy I receive is not a simple, pure joy. It is not like hearing a candence finally sliding into resolution at the end of a melodic line, nor the perfectness of a set of angles in a Kandinsky, nor is it the brilliance of a single turn of phrase or moment in a novel. The pleasure I find in Pound is somewhat more like the pleasure one finds in a good, serious Scotch that costs too much for one to enjoy it too often. There are these layers, these faint particles of …

With samples. I’m not kidding. And as much as I like Pound, some of this stuff ain’t so hot. (Though some of it’s actually bad for a barely trained musician.) Not any example of musical modernism, but interesting enough, some of it.