I Never Told You To Read It

Those who have followed this blog know that I am not a fan of Pound, although, of course, when dealing with Williams there’s somehow no avoiding Ez and his pretensions. The newly archived sound recordings of Pound on PennSound, reveal that he was as much if not more a voice than a writer, but it’s a voice that has erased all the original Jersey in it, replaced by some monstrous fake-bardic brogue. I prefer the simple, cracker sing-song of Williams next to the oracular posturing of Pound spouting the indecipherable or the patently ridiculous (an example of the latter is the insufferable whine of “Cantico del Sole.”) The reason Pound has been on my mind again is that, while rereading Paterson, I am paying attention this time to the overall design, and it’s interesting to me that the geological cross section passage which has fascinated many of the writers associated with this blog (Shaw, Lunberry, Wontham) is preceded by a passage culled from a correspondence with Pound. It seems that the “unreadability” of the geological cross section is montaged with Pound talking about the readability of Artaud. It’s as if Williams is saying that the mute geological depths are just as unrelentingly silent as the classics Pound is telling him to read instead. So, I’m reading it as a diss of Pound, but you tell me. While Pound seems to be criticizing Williams for enjoying Artaud, Williams is siding with the vitalism of Artaud (note the higgeldy-piggeldy of the text on pg137 before the Pound page, which is regimented more like a sales receipt.)