Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XXV-XXVI

This entry is part 22 of 60 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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A Day Late and a Canto Short

It’s exam week, and I’m grading like hell. So this week’s Cantos posting will be 24 hours late, and I anticipate I’ll only get through Cantos XXV and XXVI — Canto XXVII will have to wait till next week… Patience. In the meantime, a little jump forward to post-St. Elizabeth’s, before a move back to his life very close to the time where we’re discussing him:

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Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot, Illustrated by Edward Gorey

I’d read everything else that T.S. Eliot produced — in terms of verse and drama, at least — but when I ran across a reference to Possum’s Book of Practical Cats in a Pound biography I’ve been working my way through (noting simply that Pound had nothing good to say about it), I realized I hadn’t read it. I found dug through the poetry-books-to-read on my shelf, found it, and dug in. Well, I can certainly see why Pound had nothing to say about it; in fact, it reads like poetry for kids, and, well… can you imagine Ezra Pound …

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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XXIII – XXIV

This entry is part 21 of 60 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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Our Twisted Hero by Yi Munyol, Trans. Kevin O’Rourke

I haven’t read a lot of Korean fiction lately. Of course, I haven’t read a lot of fiction lately, so that is part of why. But after a conversation in which this book came up, I decided to pick it up and try again, after having set it down twenty pages in, a year or two ago. I’ve been ill this weekend, and needing a break from grading, so I’ve read two short novels so far, of which this is the second. Our Twisted Hero is quite transparently an allegory of the process of dictatorship — especially the cult-of-personality type …

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It’s Not An All Night Fair by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Translated by C.W. Watson

It’s Not An All Night Fair is a short novel–indeed, more of a short novella–by probably the most famous Indonesian novelist, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Though I haven’t finished the other Toer book I started (All That Is Gone) that’s becaise it’s a collection of short stories, and I often pick my way through those slowly — nothing wrong with the collection, but nothing compels me to read it in one fell swoop. On the other hand, if I couldn’t finish It’s Not An All Night Fair in one go, it’d reflect badly either on the author, or on me. Happily, …

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What is Food To Us?

Regarding whether New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg is in the right or the wrong in his bid to legislate about what size of soft drinks can be sold in the city, the discussion seems kind  of misguided in my opinion. It seems, in fact, misguided on both sides of the argument. Those who are up in arms for this “infringement of freedom” have some nerve: after all, why complain when sugar is added to an already long list of controlled substances? In America, people cannot ingest marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or a host of other chemicals legally. If a society has …

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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XX – XXII

This entry is part 20 of 60 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, one by one (so far — I may deal with a few at a time on occasion) 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. If you’d like to know more …

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What Happens in Post Production…

… stays in the film… for-ever. Which is troublesome when what happens in editing and post-production is what happened to Snow White and the Huntsman. Which must haunt actors, editors, camera operators, and everyone else subject to the pressure of studios and of directors. (I don’t know who’s to blame in this case: director Rupert Sanders I’ve never heard of before, so it may not be his fault — or it just may — but someone really screwed up the film.) Not that I had very high expectations for the film in the first place (Chris Hemsworth has not yet really …

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Poundmania: On Process and Plans

This entry is part 19 of 60 in the series Blogging Pound's The 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 …

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