Let's see if this passes muster for the opening question:

I've read the ABC of Reading and Zukofsky's A Test of Poetry, and I fail to see the value they provide for non-Pound/Zukofsky scholars. If you're going to recommend some Pound criticism -- and so much of it is in print -- why not something that's not so polemic and baseless in so many ways, something that provides some interesting THOUGHT without those interminable comparisons of similar, nigh-indistinguishable poetic technique? Arnold provided the form for Pound, who replied with the ABC; Pound's more original "textbooks," say Gaudier-Brezka or the Spirit of Romance are more useful for a poet to read and, in my opinion, more necessary.

-- John O'Connell (oconnell@siam.org), April 14, 1999

Answers

Good question, and I admit I haven't read it since my youth. So blurry-eyed this morning I grabbed it off my bookshelf and opened it to p 34: 'A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in proces of losing grip ... on itself. And this looseness and blowsiness is not anything as simple and scandalous as abrupt as simple and disordered syntax.

..Abrupt and disordered syntax can be at times very honest, etc'

I rest my case. We can only reject what we know. If you would care to supply your recommendations (with links) I would be happy to put them up. I am not a Pound scholar, and ignorance is my terminal condition.

Good poets steal, bad poets imitate, make it new from the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart - to mix a few poets.

Terry Gillmore

-- Terry Gillmore (poet@poetrystore.com), April 14, 1999.