Uche…..point by point:
1) “To focus on The Wasteland, as I think the discussion rightly does for the most part, Eliot grabbed from LaForgue, Appolinaire, The Elizebethans, drama and cinema overall, etc., and got a huge helping hand from Pound.”
I’ve acknowledged some of the debt Eliot paid to his poetic forebears.
2) “The vaunted "jump cuts" are not much more than you find all over Shakespeare.”
In his sonnets? Where, exactly?
3) “I agree with Robin that The Pisan Cantos are a better work than The Wasteland (though I don't think the distance in my regard is as much as in Robin's), so I don't see fit to care that The Wasteland came first chronologically.”
In terms of later influence, chronology does matter.
4) “I see here a very narrow grounds for evaluation established post-facto to accommodate a pre-selected pair of works.”
Perhaps, but we have to start somewhere.
5) “For the more general claim that there has been no major poetic innovation in a century or so, even if I were to agree, I'd say "so what"? You could say that Petrarca's major innovations led to a centuries-long efflourescence of fresh, vernacular poetry throughout Europe, and you could easily argue there was nothing to match that register of innovation in those centuries, or even since, but does that really matter? Even if there have been no innovations in a century (which I certainly don't believe), it would seem to be a bit of
trivia with no substantive implications.”
It isn’t as trivial as it seems. Whole poetic careers, sinecures, academic tenures, funding and grant availability etc. (if not institutions, e.g. Black Mountain etc) have been built on an assumed innovatory practice which has developed since Eliot et al.
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