More Than Pretty Music

At the close of his 109th Canto, Ezra Pound looks back (not for the first time) to hail the reader: “You in the dinghy (piccioletta) astern there!” So Dante embarking on the Paradiso warns those who bob in the wake with ears only for his song (O voi che sieta in piccioletta barca) to turn back while there is time. Whoever on the contrary is avid for new modes of knowledge, and interested in more than the pretty music, is welcome, Dante adds, to follow along. This is, coming from Pound, a perfectly courteous warning. Though the newest sections of his forty years’ magnum opus (Thrones: 96-109 de los cantares, New Directions, $3.50) blaze with lyric detail—•

And was her daughter like that; Black as Demeter’s gown, eyes, hair?

HK

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Hugh Kenner

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Poetry

At the close of his 109th Canto, Ezra Pound looks back (not for the first time) to hail the reader: “You in the dinghy (piccioletta) astern there!” So Dante embarking on the Paradiso warns those who bob in the wake with ears only for his song (O voi che sieta in piccioletta barca) to turn back while there is time. Whoever on the contrary is avid for new modes of knowledge, and interested in more than the pretty music, is welcome, Dante adds, to follow along. This is, coming from Pound, a perfectly courteous warning. Though the newest sections of his forty years’ magnum opus (Thrones: 96-109 de los cantares, New Directions, $3.50) blaze with lyric detail—•

And was her daughter like that; Black as Demeter’s gown, eyes, hair?