Mike Essig
Jul 27, 2017 · 1 min read

To stay sane, read only the Draft of XXX Cantos, The Pisan Cantos, and Rock-Drill De Los Cantares. That gives you the best without driving you mad. You need a gloss for the languages you don’t know. They matter. Don’t skip over them. Try to understand the significance of the term Periplum. It is the key to the structure.

I wrote my master’s thesis on Gemstone Imagery in Pound’s Pisan Cantos. It quite nearly killed me.

There is a great deal of marvelous poetry in The Cantos. Enjoy that. The book was never meant to be understood as a finished whole. Indeed, it never was finished. What ever is?

    Mike Essig

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    Honorary Schizophrenic. Recent refugee. Displaced person. Old white male. Confidant of cassowaries.