Pound, order, and polyvocality
 

Bernstein 122: "Pound, or part of him, wished to control the valuation of the materials he appropriated by arranging them is such a way that an immanent or 'natural' order would be brought into being."
 
However, "the success of The Cantos is that its coherence is of a kind totally different than Pound desried or could--in his more rigid moments--accept. For the coherence of the 'hyperspace' of Pound's modernist collage is not a predetermined Truth of a pancultural elitism but a product of a compositionally decentered multiculturalism"
 
the work's "complex, polyvocal textuality was the result of his search--his unrequited desire for--deeper truths than could be revealed by more monadically organized poems operating with a single voice and a single perspective."
 
125: "In the struggle for control, Pound’s methods and materials routed Pound’s authority and preconceptions; poisoned by this discontinuity, the straws he reached for were reductivist economism and fascist racism."

> from Charles Bernstein's A Poetics (1992)

> tagged with #collage, #order#, poetry, #fascism

> created Mar 7, 2025 at 5:34:49 PM


> part of unfinished everything


search unfinished everything


unfinished everything is an original work / ongoing project (1997-present) by jeremy p. bushnell

selection, arrangement, and original text available for creative reuse under this licensing arrangement

authors' quoted words are their own.

home | @jpb.bsky.social