Ebook: Reading the Cantos

Book cover; title; copyright; contents; preface; i: introduction; ii: a draft of xxx cantos 1917-1930; iii: nuevo mundo 1934; iv: the fifth decad 1937; v: china and adams 1940; vi: the pisan cantos 1948; vii: rock-drill 1955; viii: thrones 1959; index.;First published in 1967, this is a study which tackles the central problem of meaning, within Ezra Pound's The Cantos. It deals with the question of important critical issues, as well as of interpretation and understanding. Students of modern poetry will derive great benefit from this vigorous and lucid analysis of Pound's masterpiece. Noel Stock's finding is radical: that The Cantos is not a really a poem at all, but rather notes towards a poem. It is a collection of fragments of varying quality - some of extraordinary power and beauty - but in no sense formed into a work of art.