Ezra Pound's 'Canto II'

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) is possibly both the most influential and the most controversial poet of the twentieth century. Love him or loathe him, there’s a lot to learn from his poetry even if all you want to do is explain why you think it’s terrible. As an adult in any democracy you can make up your own mind about his politics and how it affects his poems and your reading of them.

I’ve read the Cantos through twice. So to say they are unreadable is obviously false. But they contain great swathes of boring, badly written prose; page after page littered with Chinese symbols and/or bits of Greek, and Canto after Canto of tedious attempts at ‘history’. They also contain jaw dropping moments of beauty.

This is the second Canto and it swings. I know no Greek so my pronunciation of Greek words and names is probably inaccurate.