Sorry about the breaks between verses, for there are none

[petronia]

Canto II
EZRA POUND

Hang it all, Robert Browning,
there can be but the one "Sordello."
But Sordello, and my Sordello?
Lo Sordels si fo di Mantovana.
So-Shu churned in the sea.
Seal sports in the spray-whited circles of cliff-wash,
Sleek head, daughter of Lyr,
eyes of Picasso
Under black fur-hood, lithe daughter of Ocean;
And the wave runs in the beach-groove:
"Eleanor, Elenaus and Eliptolis!"
And poor old Homer, blind, blind as a bat,
Ear, ear for the sea-surge, murmer of old men's voices:
"Let her go back to the ships,
Back among Grecian faces, lest evil come on our own,
Evil and further evil, and a curse cursed on our children,
Moves, yes she moves like a goddess
And has the face of a god
and the voice of Schoeney's daughters,
And doom goes with her in walking,
Let her go back to the ships,
back among Grecian voices."
And by the beach-run, Tyro,
Twisted arms of the sea-god,
Lithe sinews of water, gripping her, cross-hold,
Glare azure of water, cold-welter, close cover,
Quiet sun-tawny sand-stretch,
The gulls broad out their wings,
nipping between the splay feathers;
Snipe come for their bath,
bend out their wing-joints,
Spread wet wings to the sun-film,
And by Scios,
to left of the Naxos passage,
Naviform rock overgrown,
algae cling to its edge,
There is a wine-red glow in the shallows,
a tin flash in the sun-dazzle.
The ship landed in Scios,
men wanting spring-water,
And by the rock-pool a young boy loggy with vine-must,
"To Naxos? Yes, we'll take you to Naxos,
Cum' along lad." "Not that way!"
"Aye, that way is Naxos."
And I said: "It's a straight ship."
And an ex-convict out of Italy
knocked me into the fore-stays,
(He was wanted for manslaughter in Tuscany)
And the whole twenty against me,
Mad for a little slave money.
And they took her out of Scios
And off her course...
And the boy came to, again, with the racket,
And looked out over the bows,
and to eastward, and to the Naxos passage.
God-sleight then, god-sleight:
Ship stock fast in sea-swirl,
Ivy upon the oars, King Pentheus,
grapes with no seed but sea-foam,
Ivy in scupper hole.
Aye, I, Acoetes, stood there,
and the god stood by me,
Water cutting under the keel,
Sea-break from stern forrards,
wake running off from the bow,
And where was gunwale, there now was vine-trunk,
And tenthril where cordage had been,
grape-leaves on the rowlocks,
Heavy vine on the oarshafts,
And, out of nothing, a breathing,
hot breath on my ankles,
Beasts like shadows in glass,
a furred tail upon nothingness.
Lynx-purr, and heathery smell of beasts,
where tar smell had been,
Sniff and pad-foot of beasts,
eye-glitter out of black air.
The sky overshot, dry, with no tempest,
Sniff and pad-foot of beasts,
fur brushing my knee-skin,
Rustle of airy sheaths,
dry forms in the aether.
And the ship like a keel in ship-yard,
slung like an ox in smith's sling,
Ribs stuck fast in the ways,
grape-cluster over pin-rack,
void air taking pelt.
Lifeless air become sinewed,
feline leisure of panthers,
Leopards sniffing the grape shoots by scupper-hole,
Crouched panthers by fore-hatch,
And the sea blue-deep about us,
green-ruddy in shadows,
And Lyaeus: "From now, Acoetes, my altars,
Fearing no bondage,
fearing no cat of the wood,
Safe with my lynxes,
feeding grapes to my leopards,
Olibanum is my incense,
the vines grow in my homage."
The back-swell now smooth in the rudder-chains,
Black snout of a porpoise
where Lycabs had been,
Fish-scales on the oarsmen.
And I worship.
I have seen what I have seen.
When they brought the boy I said:
"He has a god in him,
though I do not know which god."
And they kicked me into the fore-stays.
I have seen what I have seen:
Medon's face like the face of a dory,
Arms shrunk into fins. And you, Pentheus,
Had as well listen to Tiresias, and to Cadmus,
or your luck will go out of you.
Fish-scales over groin muscles,
lynx-purr amid sea...
And of a later year,
pale in the wine-red algae,
If you will lean over the rock,
the coral face under wave-tinge,
Rose-paleness under water-shift,
Ileuthyeria, fair Dafne of sea-bords,
The swimmer's arms turned to branches,
Who will say in what year,
fleeing what band of tritons,
The smooth brows, seen, and half seen,
now ivory stillness.
And So-shu churned in the sea, So-shu also,
using the long moon for a churn-stick...
Lithe turning of water,
sinews of Poseidon,
Black azure and hyaline,
glass wave over Tyro,
Close cover, unstillness,
bright welter of wave-cords,
Then quiet water,
quiet in the buff sands,
Sea-fowl stretching wing-joints,
splashing in rock-hollows and sand-hollows
In the wave-runs by the half-dune;
Glass-glint of wave in the tide-rips against sunlight,
pallor of Hesperus,
Grey peak of the wave,
wave, colour of grapes' pulp,
Olive grey in the near,
far, smoke grey of the rock-slide,
Salmon-pink wings of the fish-hawk
cast grey shadows in water,
The tower like a one-eyed great goose
cranes up out of the olive-grove,
And we have heard the fauns chiding Proteus
in the smell of hay under the olive-trees,
And the frogs singing against the fauns
in the half-light.
And...




AND IT ENDS. I guess my thing for Pound amounts to the fact that when I read him I get this overwhelming sense of "Wow, I guess that totally made sense in your head, dude." Which is also how I write if/when I'm not careful and think I can get away with it, so, yanno. Kindred spirit. XD;; There have been people paid to sit there and analyze and tease out aaaaall the references; I have white papers downloaded from JSTOR, and shiz.

Apart from which the imagery stuns one into submission. Void air taking pelt... There was one bit in the Twelve Kingdoms anime that reminded me of this, hilariously I couldn't help thinking that if Pound were to - but actually let's not go there. For sanity's sake. XD;

Comments

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

......that was completely inexplicable, but it was a very pretty kind of inexplicable...

I love the imagery. Also have a thing for turning non-verbs into verbs. ("The gulls broad out their wings", that was lovely.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

So basically these pirates kidnap a boy intending to sell him into slavery, but he turns out to be the god Dionysus, stops the ship, and turns them all into fish. Acoetes, the helmsman, is the only survivor. In this version he tells the story as a warning to King Pentheus; as Pentheus takes no heed and suppresses the cult of Dionysus anyway, he's driven mad by the god and is torn to pieces by the women of his own family.

...It occurs to me to wonder if the bit re: Eleanor of Acquitaine relates to that as well. Hmm. XD

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

...SERIOUSLY?

Jesus christ man I was just taking all that in as RANDOM GREEK REFERENCES. XD; Okay admittedly I am not very good at parsing poetry to begin with, so.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the myth. Pound means it symbolically, though, the question is more - symbol for what. XD

Here (http://www.case.edu/artsci/engl/VSALM/mod/whipple/site/draft_2/canto_2.html) are explanations for some of the refs, and here (http://www.deepleafproductions.com/wilsonlibrary/texts/raw-cantos.html).

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

Nooo, let's go there!

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Animal metamorphoses, holy mountains, and weird stuff done with ideograms! Ezra Pound in a nutshell, lollerskates.

...I'm a bit drunk. XD Anyway yeah, I just think of this as THE BISHOUNEN KIDNAPPING CANTO.

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

XDDD

Despite not being drunk myself I now really want to see this rewritten as AN SSBB STORY? Can Acoetes be a seme w/ sword

[petronia.livejournal.com]

That was sort of the idea! One upcoming issue or another. I'm a bit (re)obsessed with Greek myth these days.

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

APPROVED

That "And..." at the end was just Pound fading to black on the smut scene.

[fable.livejournal.com]

I think I like Pound for completely different reasons than you. XD I thought that most of his Cantos was self-conscious anti!pop pop - pretty on the surface, with layers of meaning underneath obscuring the fact that there was nothing meaningful they were obscuring. Like I told Chrissie, I could see him smirking to himself going, "you're never going to understand this brilliance, you plebes, so don't even try," which would have been okay if I'd thought it was brilliance, but once I'd untangled what it meant I was always left with the feeling of "wait, that's it?" - that it was a clever but irrelevant puzzle. Also, from the non-poetry stuff he wrote, like his book "the ABCs of poetry" (that's what it was called, right? its been over a decade since I studied him), I thought he was somewhat insufferable the way he rejected everything that didn't meet his standards, thought it worthless, an attitude that I find worthless in itself (probably because I see it in myself so much at times XD;;). This wouldn't have mattered to my appreciation of his work, however, if I hadn't seen it in in work too - Pound the person bleeding into Pound the poet.

Then I read his last fragmentary Cantos & notes, and he became one of my favorite poets. Couldn't believe at first that the same person could have written them. It was like he was saying - "oh. I've been a fool. forgive me." - in some of the most simply beautiful lines of poetry. And I found it so moving, especially considering what had come before. So, yeah. Basically, only found the Cantos meaningful & worth reading when Pound acknowledged that they were meaningless and not worth reading. XD

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Actually I agree with you on pretty much all of this. XD I mean, I read Chinese, for one, so a lot of the time I'm like, "Dude, this isn't nearly as impressive as you seem to think it is." (And he really was an insufferable person, I think, not just somewhat - wacky in his beliefs too.) But I enjoy working through the puzzle for the sake of working through the puzzle.

...Or not even; I enjoy the process of wading through the text, looking for the flashes of lyrical brilliance that make irrelevant whatever Pound was actually trying to say. Like hunting for seashells. I've come to realize that this process describes my relationship with a lot of texts, in fact - Jubilate Agno, which come to think of it was written under similar circumstances as a great deal of the later Cantos. XD; Anyway I tend to be drawn to succinct forms, so it's nice to be able to open and book and see the pages stretch on and on. And Pound never makes my eyes cross, unlike the Romantics.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

And w/r/t the latter - yes, it's true, and they are very good poems as well as an appropriate close (perhaps the only appropriate close to any life's work? Other than raging against the dying of the light), but I don't think Pound's judgment of his own oeuvre matters to me per se. And sometimes... I don't know. His life brought him to that. Same goes for Wilde's De Profundis and I can barely bring myself to read it, because it seems unfair that it should ever had to have come into existence. I suppose Pound deserved most of what he got. ^^;

[fable.livejournal.com]

I mean, I read Chinese, for one, so a lot of the time I'm like, "Dude, this isn't nearly as impressive as you seem to think it is." (And he really was an insufferable person, I think, not just somewhat - wacky in his beliefs too.)

You're right - we do agree on a lot of this.


And w/r/t the latter - yes, it's true, and they are very good poems as well as an appropriate close (perhaps the only appropriate close to any life's work? Other than raging against the dying of the light), but I don't think Pound's judgment of his own oeuvre matters to me per se.

It's not his judgment of his work that matters to me as much as, how to put this? I think for the most part what he wrote was artifice without meaning, deluding himself that it had profound meaning. But in the last, fragmentary and unfinished Cantos, when he gave up trying to write the most-meaningfulest and righteous poem EVAH, and just wrote what was, however broken and fragmented and inadequate, are when, imo, he managed to write something that was relevant and meaningful and truly become a poet (whatever that means. I'm a bit idealistic about these things. XD;) Like the lines - "I have tried to write Paradise/ Do not move/ Let the wind speak/ That is paradise" - I suppose its the idea that you can't be a great artist by thinking your way to it, you can't create paradise by superimposing your thoughts & ideals on the real world and ruthlessly cutting away everything that doesn't fit, because life, truth, whatever it is that really matters, will be lost when you do so, were lost when he did do so. That sometimes you have to let go and just be. And its the first time in his poetry I see this idea come across, and I think, in this way, his judgment of his work is more meaningful than anything else he's written. Like the Buddhist koan - "if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him!" - except much easier for me to grasp than Buddhist koans have ever been. XD


And sometimes... I don't know. His life brought him to that. Same goes for Wilde's De Profundis and I can barely bring myself to read it, because it seems unfair that it should ever had to have come into existence. I suppose Pound deserved most of what he got. ^^;

Yup. Pound's life could serve as a modern-day morality play, and I don't have any pity for him. Wilde's life, on the other hand, was just depressing.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

But in the last, fragmentary and unfinished Cantos, when he gave up trying to write the most-meaningfulest and righteous poem EVAH, and just wrote what was, however broken and fragmented and inadequate, are when, imo, he managed to write something that was relevant and meaningful and truly become a poet

But the conclusion wouldn't have had the same significance if there hadn't been the umpteen buttzillion canto over-intellectualized body of work preceding it, roight. XD Like De Profundis wouldn't have the same resonance if it had been written by someone other than Wilde. I mean, anyone could turn to God, or throw up their hands at the ineffability of the universe. Ezra Pound doing it is something else.

[fable.livejournal.com]

Very true! I'm trying to think of a non-literary comparison now, and I think the surprise I felt at reading the last cantos, and the route that Pound's life in general took, would be (very roughly) equivalent to someone like Bill Kristol (ignoring the fact that Pound was a good writer, and Kristol isn't) announcing that he was wrong in supporting the Republican party, wrong about climate change and the Iraq war, and to make up for that he was going to vote for Barack Obama and donate all of his money to Democracy Now and spend the rest of his life promoting environmental-friendly sustainable living. In France.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

someone like Bill Kristol (ignoring the fact that Pound was a good writer, and Kristol isn't) announcing that he was wrong in supporting the Republican party, wrong about climate change and the Iraq war, and to make up for that he was going to vote for Barack Obama and donate all of his money to Democracy Now and spend the rest of his life promoting environmental-friendly sustainable living. In France

Haha if only!! The subtly missing factor here is probably a lengthy asylum stay. :X