Poundmania: On Process and Plans

Blogging Pound's The Cantos

• Ezra Poundings – The Reboot
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto I
• The Traneumentary, Shooting for Trane, and Pound/Trane in Comparison
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto II
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto III
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: The Ur-Cantos
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto IV
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto V
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos VI and VII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos VIII-IX (The Malatesta Cantos, Part 1)
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos X-XI (The Malatesta Cantos, Part 2)
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XII-XIII (Baldy Bacon and Kung)
• “Ezra Poundings”
• Pound and the Occult: Leon Surette’s The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the Occult
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XIV-XV (“The Hell-Cantos”)
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XVI — Ending “A Draft of XVI Cantos”
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XVII — Toward “A Draft of Cantos 17-27”
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XVIII & XIX
• Poundmania: On Process and Plans
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XX – XXII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XXIII – XXIV
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XXV-XXVI
• A Study From Ontario: Leon Surette’s A Light From Eleusis: A Study of Ezra Pound’s Cantos
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XXVII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XXVIII-XXX
• Ezra Pound Posts Delayed
• The Mays of Ventadorn by W.S. Merwin
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XXXI-XXXIII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XXXIV-XXXVI
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XXXVII-XXXIX
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XL-XLI
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XLII-XLV
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XLVI-XLVII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XLVIII
• Reading the Cantos: A Study of Meaning in Ezra Pound by Noel Stock
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XLIX
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto L
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LI
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LIII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LIV
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LV (Plus, What Do Ezra Pound, Robert Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, and Sun Ra Have In Common?)
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LVI & LVII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LIX
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LX
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXI
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: More on Canto LVII, and Canto LVIII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXIII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXV
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXIV
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXVI
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXVII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXVIII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos LXIX and LXX
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXXI
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos LXXII and LXXIII (“The Fascist Cantos”)

So, I calculated the other day that if I spent about 25 days in July and August on The Cantos, I could finish reading the whole thing before Miss Jiwaku go on our summer holidays. Of course, that’s crazy, but it’s not beyond me. If I were to do it, I would in theory be doing a study-session and post every second day, though in reality, my Pound posts so far have been the product of a couple of days’ work (well, a few hours each day for a few days);

Now, those of you with more math skillz than your average Pound fan will probably notice that 25 days only would yield 50 Cantos, whereas currently (having written most of next week’s post already) I have about 85 Cantos remaining, plus a few bits and pieces. There are two assumptions:

1. The Chinese and Adams Cantos are, from what I’ve read, much less poetical, and much more, well… versified excerpts of somewhat arbitrary selections from a single book on Chinese history, and a single multivolume book on John Adams. What I’ve read suggests that while they are a hard slog, I may not find so much of use to me. Therefore, those 20-odd Cantos would get dealt with in a mere four or five posts.
2. I would, at least for the summer, increase my pace to three Cantos a posting, except when really inappropriate. (For example, when finishing a section, I would not add a canto from a new section just to get three; or when dealing with a particularly significant or difficult Canto, I might spend a single post on one Canto.

If I followed this regime I would be through the book by sometime in September. However, I’m not completely sure this is the best way to do it. I’ve been lucky, I suppose, in serendipitously running across the very texts that helped me understand important chunks of what I was reading, at exactly the time when they could help me most. I would hate to hurry through, only to discover, later on when I was working through secondary sources, that the key to some enigmatic puzzle was right there on my desk, being ignored because I was going to make my fourth posting of the week, and cover my twelfth canto of the week, or bust.

In fact, what I’ll probably do is work on two to three posts per week; this will give me some breathing room in the summer, but also some breathing room for Tuesdays through the fall semester. I won’t be posting everything as I write it: rather, I’ll reserve posts for each Tuesday, which means the series should be finishing up sometime in January or February 2013.

That will let me get some writing done, and some proper exercise, as well as allow me to brew up the Saisons I want to brew, sort through and junk some of my crap, while also making things easier for me in the fall, when my class schedule should be less hectic, but when I hope to be working on a major writing project. (Either the one I begin this summer, or a new one.)

But I tell you: this studying Ezra Pound thing, it can really take over if you let it. It just creeps in and bugs you, like, “Right, so what is that passage about?” drifts into your mind when you’re supposed to be doing other things.