Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XXXVII-XXXIX

John Quincy Adams
This entry is part 30 of 57 in the series Blogging Pound's The Cantos

This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, a few at a time. These are not exactly typical readings of the poems, so much as readings I’m doing with a specific research project in mind for a fiction project I’d like to write next year. If you’d like to know more about the project, I recommend scrolling down to the bottom of extended post, and reading the first installment in this series. I’m currently working my way through Eleven New Cantos XXXI-XLI, and this week, I’m up to my second posting on …

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Back to the… Wait, What?

Well, while Typhoon Bolaven does its worst out there–and it doesn’t have me particularly alarmed at the moment, though I’m not venturing outside or anything… our neighborhood is in a panic, though, and the local mini-marts were cleaned out as you can see in the featured image for this post–I’m thinking about what the hell to do with the course I foolishly agreed to teach this semester. That course is a Foundations in Greco-Roman Mythology and Biblical Narrative course. You know, the kind of thing you spend a summer preparing a course outline and readings package for? As with most …

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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XXXIV-XXXVI

John Quincy Adams
This entry is part 29 of 57 in the series Blogging Pound's The Cantos

This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, a few at a time. These are not exactly typical readings of the poems, so much as readings I’m doing with a specific research project in mind for a fiction project I’d like to write next year. If you’d like to know more about the project, I recommend scrolling down to the bottom of extended post, and reading the first installment in this series. Yesterday, I launched into Eleven New Cantos XXXI-XLI with a short essay (which it is, more than a close …

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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XXXI-XXXIII

Thomas Jefferson
This entry is part 28 of 57 in the series Blogging Pound's The Cantos

This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, a few at a time. These are not exactly typical readings of the poems, so much as readings I’m doing with a specific research project in mind — how to write Ezra Pound as a figure in a novel in which modernist artists, poets, and musicians secretly waged an occult war in the earlier half of the 20th century. Or maybe about artists, musicians, and poets waging a secret, occult war in some other world vaguely like ours, in a time period …

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The Mays of Ventadorn by W.S. Merwin

The Mays of Ventadorn
This entry is part 27 of 57 in the series Blogging Pound's The Cantos

While I must admit to having read none of Merwin’s poetry, I found myself quite curious about his book, The Mays of Ventadorn; since encountering the most famous of the songs of Bernart de Ventadorn, I have always considered him my favorite troubadour. (And while this is not unusual–Bernart was something of a rockstar in his day, and is well-remembered today–I was pleased to discover that my fascination was shared by Merwin.) This book was published by National Geographic Directions, and is part of a series titled The Literary Travel Series, a job for which Merwin is well-suited, having spent …

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