Ezra Pound's Cantos

Most blog posts and papers about Ezra Pound's Cantos focus on two topics: the author's biography (including his political beliefs) and the poem's centrality to the modernist movement. A couple blogs transcend the intellectual norm and actually discuss the poetry itself; I recommend Big Other and Figures of Speech.

Last year I read through the Cantos (admittedly skimming through the John Adams cycle) and consulted Carroll F. Terrell's reference to help decode the epic poem's myriad allusions to history, mythology, philosophy, economics, and contemporary events. It quickly became one of my favorite works of poetry. As I read various blog posts and other commentary on the Cantos, I noticed that few people wanted to discuss what made the poem itself so great. Literary critics ought to treat poetry like gourmands treat food. Imagine if Anthony Bourdain purchased offal from an old Sicilian man, tipped the napkin-ensconced viscera into his mouth without a single word of explication, and then began lecturing the audience on the Sicilians' appraisal of Mussolini and speculated about the offal vendor's extramarital affairs. Then his TV show would've been cancelled, because you can't get something that ridiculous past even the most passive consumer of mass media. The main concern of a gourmand is the quality of whatever morsel happens to fall under his scrutiny. The same generally goes for chefs: you have to know what good food is if you want to make it as a chef while also being honest with yourself. The same also goes for painters, musicians, et cetera; anything within the broad umbrella of the arts. When the avant-gardists finally have their way with the critics (in Minecraft), only gourmands will be spared, and even then a large subset of gourmand-identifying individuals might not make the cut. All of this is to say that we need a food criticism of poetry, and of the Cantos in particular, so that creative types like you and I can better understand the nature of beauty as it occurs in the literary medium. Ultimately, this is about enjoying the arts (said with spiritual overtones) and understanding aesthetics so as to enhance our own creative work. In the words of Ezra Pound: MAKE IT NEW.

To do this, we must first vault over the questions that have vexed critics and bloggers alike. Was Ezra Pound a good person? Not applicable. Are the Cantos actually poetry? They are literature. Is the John Adams cycle any good? Doesn't matter.

All that being said, there are still interesting aspects of Ezra Pound's biography and philosophy that I would like to cover in future posts; but those can wait.

A Curated Selection of Gems

Unfortunately we'll have to look at the Cantos in little excerpts, as it would be impractical to republish the work right here in its entirety. If you haven't read the Cantos, I hope these passages still hit with enough clarità and intensity; any references that are necessary to understand will be explained. The explanations come from Carroll F. Terrell's excellent book, A Companion to The Cantos of EZRA POUND.

from Canto XX:

"Their names are not written in bronze
  "Nor their rowing sticks set with Elpenor's;
"Nor have they mound by sea-bord.
  "That saw never the olives under Spartha
"With the leaves green and then not green,
  "The click of light in their branches;
"That saw not the bronze hall nor the ingle
"Nor lay there with the queen's waiting maids,
"Nor had they Circe to couch-mate, Circe Titania,
"Nor had they meats of Kalüpso
"Or her silk skirts brushing their thighs.
"Give!   What were they given?
          Ear-wax.
"Poison and ear-wax,
      and a salt grave by the bull-field,
"neson amumuna^[1], their heads like sea crows in the foam,
"Canned beef of Apollo, ten cans for a boat load."

1. "Excellent island", the one where Apollo kept his sacred cattle.

Part of a larger canto, this excerpt consists of dialogue from an anonymous opium smoker who crept into the narrative. The images of olive trees and cadaver-scalps floating in the water feel fresh, because the language used to describe them is unique and unexpected--green/not green, click of light, sea crows--and the metaphors aren't simply inventive nonsense, but produce crystal-clear impressions in the reader's mind. "Canned beef of Apollo" is the final creative flair: in my opinion, Pound's interpolation of (then-)modern phrases into his work lends it a funky edge, like high-quality pecorino romano in a pasta.

from Canto LXXXIII:

With clouds over Taishan-Chocorua^[1]
    when the blackberry ripens
and now the new moon faces Taishan
one must count by the dawn star
  Dryad, thy peace is like water
There is September sun on the pools

1. Taishan is a mountain in China associated with sacred rituals; Chocorua is a mountain in New Hampshire. "Taishan-Chocorua" refers to a mountain near Pisa that Pound could see from his cage in the American prison camp.

After the first excerpt, we can see that the Cantos abound with lucid depictions of natural scenery. The ripening blackberry stands for the theme of natural growth, which in the Cantos represents the mark of divine intelligence in all created things, and serves as the basis of Pound's ideal of economic justice. The Cantos phase between mythology, history, dialogue, and in this case, real life: the larger passage from which this excerpt is drawn situates parts of the Pisan prison camp within the fantasy world of Confucius, Apollonius of Tyre, John Adams, et al.; everything melts together into a hyper-complex narrative. The structure of "Dryad, thy peace is like water" repeats in various forms throughout the epic, and along with other structural motifs (including the phrase "so that") it feels like a musical refrain. And the subtle nuance of "September sun" gives the reader a precise and lucid image in only a couple words.

also from Canto LXXXIII:

  and Brother Wasp is building a very neat house
  of four rooms, one shaped like a squat indian bottle
  La vespa, la vespa, mud, swallow system
so that dreaming of Bracelonde^[1] and of Perugia^[2]
and the great fountain in the Piazza
or of old Bulagaio's^[3] cat that with a well timed leap
  could turn the lever-shaped door handle
It comes over me that Mr. Walls must^[4] be a ten-strike
with the signorinas
and in the warmth after chill sunrise
an infant, green as new grass,
has stuck its head or tip out of Madame La Vespa's bottle

1. A forest in Arthurian legend.
2. A city in Italy.
3. C.F.T. speculates that this is someone whom Pound used to know.
4. C.F.T. speculates that Mr. Walls is a fellow inmate in the camp.

The scope of this excerpt meanders from observation of a wasp nest to a flurry of memories, and then back to the wasp nest. La vespa and her child, like the blackberry in the previous section, continue the motif of natural growth. This scene also came from the prison camp, and thus evokes a certain bittersweetness. No matter what stage of life you're in, watching the lives of animals when you're stressed out inspires a strange mixture of world-weariness and relief. The reminiscence in the middle of the stanza glides from one image to the next, integrating disparate pieces into the narrative's fractal complexity. Even if the Cantos were published today, its narrative style would count as an innovation: arguably, newer authors like Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace haven't surpassed this level of complexity. But complexity doesn't always mean quality, of course; so how does complexity enhance the Cantos? The terse Imagist style of the poem requires economy of language: the minimum amount of words must deliver the maximum amount of meaning. Second, the Cantos incorporates so many concepts that, without annealing the various ideas into a continuous but complex form, it would have been impossible to reconcile the poem's lyricism with its intellectual depth. All the stylistic novelties in this poem serve as inspiration for anyone who desires to "make it new".

from Canto XCIII:

  You are tender as a marshmallow, my Love,
  I cannot use you as a fulcrum.
    You have stirred my mind out of dust.
Flora Castalia^[1], your petals drift thru the air,
the wind is ½ lighted with pollen
            diafana,
e Mona Vanna...tu mi fai rimembrar.^[2]

1. The Castalian spring, sacred to the Muses, into which the nymph Castalia flung herself while pursued by Apollo.
2. "and Madonna Giovanna, you call to mind [Proserpine] [as the nymph Matilda did]"; a reference to the work of Guido Cavalcanti and Dante.

Notice how the lines of this excerpt flow together when spoken aloud. Although they aren't in strict metre or verse, there are no alliterations that cause words to stick together, and no accidental rhymes that ring out like a washer dropped into a metal sink. Like the "canned beef of Apollo" from earlier, the ½ adds an interesting flair, and demonstrates (in a small way) Ezra Pound's technique of "ideograms", or condensed symbols of meaning. In other parts of the Cantos, Pound uses playing card suits, quotes, Greek words, and Chinese characters as ideograms. The images of marshmallow, dust, petals, and pollen form a continuous thread of softness and remind me of the colors white, pink, and yellow; and again, pollen symbolizes natural growth. This part came after the stint in Pisa, and, as in Dante's Divine Comedy, the poem builds up to visions of paradise.

Hopefully this post inspired you in some way; I wanted to demonstrate the value of such an underappreciated work of literature.