The only other books of THEORY I have, other than this recalcitrant one, are Wallace Stevens' "The Necessary Angel" and Pound's "ABCs of Reading." The latter, of course, is hilarious, if only because Pound was so wonderfully full of himself. He goes in the Triumvirate of the Mystic Persona Poets, the asshole partner to Whitman and Ginsberg, who were also larger than life poets of America and Everything. Pound was an ass, but he was an ass unto himself, and lived however he did please. Even in St. Elizabeth's, which probably should have been renamed Ezra's Bordello while he was in residence.
Pound's a testy-making subject these days, but I want to know, apart from whether you should or shouldn't read Pound, do you? I've only read some fairly heavily anthologized work, and the ABCs. I was under the impression that the majority of the Cantos were incomprehensible, and that the best thing you could do was look at Homage to Sextus Propertius, and call it a night. But what do I know? Charles Simic had a bit to say about Pound in the NY Review of Books last year. I'm pretty under-read as a whole, but I've never felt keenly the lack of Pound. Perhaps I just don't know what I'm missing. Or not. Or what.
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