Obviously, this is my first Canto for some time. Not really the best one, if you’re going to dive back in.

It starts out with some of Pound’s Gertrude Stein-like efforts to mimic American colloquial speech, like:

” I’ll tell you wot izza comin’
Sochy-lism is a-comon’

But the rest is interspersed with Chinese script and, oddly, one bit of Persian, which I believe comes with a reference to the Persian epic, The Shahnameh. There is even a little glossary of the Chinese characters, not that I entirely trust it (you can see why in the picture – ‘bi gosh’).

Most of the rest is a series of name droppings: Cocteau, Daudet, Voltair, Goncourt, etc.