[Milton-L] Re: Milton versus?

[Carrol Cox]

richard strier wrote:
> 
[clip]  The Bridge is not a total success, but neither are The Cantos, 

This caught my attention as perhaps the only positive reference to Pound
I had ever seen from a Milton schoalr. To merely point out that a poem
is not perfect is rather high praise in fact.

No, they are not perfect, but they do contain the most pangent admission
_within_ a poem of the peom's imperfection that I have ever read:

Tho' my errors and wrecks lie about me.
And I am not a demigod,
I cannot make it cohere.

...............................................

i.e. it coheres all right
                        even if my notes do not cohere.

		Canto 116

Perhaps, also, a distant echo of Paradisois intended:

My language now will be more inadequate,
Even for what I remember, than would that 
Of a child still bathing his tongue at the breast.

Carrol