Is it that they are different the grammers of English and French?
Mark
>I was going to say something about Hal's apparent confusion of
>semantics with syntax, in his attempt -- or was this a joke, Hal? --
>to deny Candice's concisely put point that English is a Germanic
>Language. But perhaps I'd better not go there.
>
> <g>
>
>Robin
>
>----- Original Message ----- From: "David Bircumshaw"
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 5:53 PM
>Subject: Re: Pound/Modernism; was draft
>
>
>>There are many poets who accept modernism but have reservations about
>>Pound. His fortunes with public acceptance were mixed, as is the case
>>for no end of writers. He did have difficulties finding publishers for
>>early versions of The Cantos but even among avant-garde writers there
>>was uncertainty about them (Joyce thought The Cantos unreadable while
>>Pound considered Finnegans Wake unintelligible. Or the other way
>>round, I can't recall which). Yet at the outset of his career his
>>early books were reviewed in publications like the Times Literary
>>Supplement. It was the varied output of his most productive period,
>>roughly 1912 -19, that gave the most impetus to other writers, it was
>>a time too when Pound's better qualities as man were at the foremost.
>>As for the issue of British poets and modernism, the answers (and
>>questions) are too many for me to even want to expatiate on here:
>>Larkin's reasons in the 1950's might not be the same as, say, Simon
>>Armitage's today. It's worth pointing out that in North America there
>>have been and are poets who pursue a kind of populist line that has
>>nothing to do with modernism and there is a corresponding readership
>>for them. There has also been, for complex historical and social
>>reasons, a resistance in some parts of British intellectual life to
>>anything that smacks of theory: 'No Isms Please, We're British'.
>>My own attitude towards the Pound of The Cantos now stand at this:
>>they is best read as if the writings of a fictional character.
>>It's the only way I can negotiate the problems raised by the
>>relationship between his politics and his aesthetics (which can't be
>>brushed aside) and it makes coherent the otherwise doubtfulness of a
>>work in which brilliance and garrulousness, musicality and stylistic
>>disjointedness, jostle together in a heap.
>>It also stops him invading my head: he is not a pleasant presence within.
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