5.3.11

Old EZ

A sketch given to me by a friend and talented artist, Chuck Landvatter...


---
"It certainly 'seems' like Ezra Pound is primarily involved with telling his mind; you know, he's telling what he thinks is good and what he thinks is bad, but I hear his song, and I heard it even when I was utterly baffled by a book that obviously had been given to me as a joke.  It wasn't just stubbornness, and I had certainly encountered other books that were tough and tougher to read than that; but after comprehending something of them I threw them out.  Here was one that the more I understood the more yield came to me.  So here became the great book for going over and over and over.  Now I would say that I can read six to ten, in some places twenty words in a row, which isn't very much still, but it's good progress in a life time's worth of reading.  I'm working on it.  I've got some of the major slogans that were to sustain me all of my life, prayers, like 'All that is is light.'  That is enough to return me to that kind of person Pound is who would know how important it is to say and give Erigena a translation-'All that is is light.'  It's so powerful in that context.  That's something of what I mean by meaning." 

- Stan Brakhage on Pound's The Cantos
---

(Also be sure to check out Yoel Meranda's excellent recent post involving Pound as well...)

2 comments:

Yoel Meranda said...

hey jacob, thanks for this, where is it from?

i hadn't checked your blog for some time, and was very pleased to see this, i think it's a nice coincidence that i posted something on ezra pound recently too..

http://blog.waysofseeing.org/2011/03/robert-duncan-on-ezra-pound-and-poetry.html

i'll add a link to this on there..

Jacob Waltman said...

Hey thanks Yoel, it's good to hear from you. The excerpt is from an essay/Q&A in "Essential Brakhage". I'll return the favor and include a link to your post as well...