Pound still hasn’t really gotten back into the swing of things, in terms of style. I’m just not a fan of most of these Cantos taking place in the early days of the United States or during the Revolutionary War.
Nonetheless, I very much enjoyed this little segment:
My compliments to Mrs Warren
as to the sea nymphs
Hyson, Congo, Bohea, and a few lesser divinities
Sirens shd/ be got into somehow.
Tories were never so affable
Tories were never so affable.
We shall oscillate like a pendulum.
slow starvation, conclave, a divan,
what shall we do when we get there
Next Sunday at 3pm, there will be a poetry reading at the DC Arts Center on2438 18th Street in Adams Morgan (south of Columbia Rd. on the west side of the street).
Admission is $5, free for DCAC members.
Gina Myers, Jim Goar, and Rod Smith are the poets.
This is a relatively short Canto compared to last few – less than five and a half pages. It mixes English with some tidbits in French and what I believe is Dutch.
Still addressing Pound’s obsession with finance, this Canto focuses on inflation as a means of depreciating debt and the consequences to the nation. The ‘time’ is Revolutionary War period.
While there’s little poetic about it, some things were interesting.
Once again, what he writes seems relevant in the wake of the last economic crisis.
The depreciation, he writes
but by no means disables the people from carrying on the war
Merchants, farmers, tradesmen and labourers gain
they are the moneyed men,
The capitalists those who have money at interest
or those on fixed salaries
lose.
If you think of ‘war’ as standing in for the ‘real economy’ – the economy of real assets, like physical items or labor, as opposed to the shifting of financial instruments – then doesn’t this point to the current inequity between those who live and work in the ‘real economy’ (most of the 99%) and the 1% who so often are those ‘who have money at interest’ as Pound says. Pound suggests that, really, we could do quite well and shouldn’t worry about the latter.
In memory of the great American poet Adrienne Rich, who passed away late last month, may I suggest this 2011 interview she gave to the Paris Review?
She is often lumped together with Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath (mainly because she was their contemporary, she was a woman, and she is associated with feminist poetics) but perhaps not given the same level of reverence. Sad to say, but maybe now that she’s dead, she will start to receive it.
Pound is still thinking about the early years of America as an independent country. The primary figure here is John Adams, which is an interesting choice because, let’s face it, before McCullough produced that door stopper of a biography, no one gave a s–t about Adams (caveat: I have read that door stopper, a signed copy no less, and it’s a good book, but I’m not going to tell you that Adams was as important as all that, except for the basic fact of having been only our second president).
An interesting little tidbit – five pages into this Canto, Pound uses ‘@’ in place of ‘at’ in a sentence:
Mazzei: little hope of success @ so low an interest
While there is little else of interest, I always perk up at mentions of early coffeehouses:
Affaires (Xmas day, Amsterdam) still suspended
but stockjobbing goes on uninterruptedly
at coffee houses on Sundays and holidays
when it cannot be held upon ‘change
As a simply historical fact, the first modern marker for stock trading (or stockjobbing, as it was, indeed, called) did truly begin in a coffeehouse.
I’m reading this while listening to a Leonard Bernstein conducted performance of Mahler’s First. Specifically, the movement drawing on a slow building of the children’s song Frère Jacques. Apropos of nothing, but I fell in love with Mahler back in 1995 when I heard this symphony.
Today’s Canto opens promisingly:
Whereof memory of man runneth not to the contrary
Dome Book, Ina, Offa and Aethelbert, folcright
for a thousand years
A bit of old school, King James sounding language, references to old English kings and the first census (I am assuming ‘Dome Book’ to be a reference to the ‘Domesday Book’ which was not about the end times, but a recording of people, lands, and property).
Sadly, it’s mostly downhill from here.
While I appreciate the Canto‘s role in the slow process of building to a grand poetic-historical document, barely the only bone he tosses us after the opening are some outbreaks of ancient history, which could be read as learned digressions by the eighteen century ‘narrators’ of this Canto and can also be read as a reminder of the great work of historicity taking place and as a tool to shake the reader from their expectations.
As another personal digression, Mahler called his First Symphony Der Titan. Each man seemed confident in their own genius and potential to direct the future of their respective forms. Hasn’t each been proved to be right, despite their faults, even their grave ones?
Philadelphia is home to some big name poets these days, including Terence Hayes and C.A. Conrad, but Sonia Sanchez is good choice.
I saw her introduce both Lucille Clifton and Hayes at their respective readings at the Folger Shakespeare Library and her poetry collections are well stocked at Busboys and Poets.
She’s by no means one of my favorite poets, but she’s deeply involved in promoting poetry and even if she is not among my favorites, she’s still a worthy versifier.
Good job, Philly.
the coffee philosopher 