PLUME (MICHAUX) ~

R E A D       M E

New York Review of Books

2017

THE ENORMOUS TRAGEDY OF THE DREAM IN THE PEASANT'S / SHOULDERS

Ezra Pound

Footnote 14 to the Pisan Cantos by Ezra Pound edited by Richard Sieburth (New Directions)

____________________________________

"As Pound is composing the Pisan in the summer

of 1945,

Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach

are inventing bebop on 52nd Street.

Parker records his historic performance of

"Ko Ko"

for Savoy Records on November 26, 1945,

the same day Pound is officially reindicted

for treason in Washington D.C. Like Bird,

Pound plays manic changes in the Pisans 

taking apart verbal chords and redistributing 

their elements, according to Olson,

"like a wild speed-machine."

____________________________________

EZ ~

Handsome, ain't it?

And just when you were on the brink of joining Facebook and Twitter,
in comes the Pro. A new reading of a classic, with both the poems
and some of the finest translations known to mankind.
Hosted by Richard Sieburth and gifted
by New Directions for the astonishing
price of $15.95, almost 400 pages!
still smelling of fresh ink
onto old leaves of grass.

A PACT

I made a pact with you, Walt Whitman —
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough not to make friends.
It was you that broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root —
Let there be commerce between us.