BK. Ezra Pound

36. ‘Canto XVII’. This Quarter (Paris) 1/2 (Autumn-Winter 1925-26): 5-7.

	Reprinted in subsequent collections.

Miner’s tracing of Pound’s continued development of the hokku-derived ‘form of super-position’ (A25, pp. 112-23, see 12) extends even to ‘many . . . instances’ in The Cantos, where, ‘generally speaking, he uses the technique . . . in two ways, either as a striking ending to a canto, or, more frequently, within a canto to express intensely in an image what has gone before or directly follows’ (p. 120). The first example Miner cites is here, where super-position ‘appears both within the Canto . . . and, more strikingly, at its end’, in the closing image of ‘Sunset like a grasshopper flying’ (57, p. 79) super-posed against all that has come before. According to Miner, Pound uses the technique ‘most freely’ in the first thirty cantos and The Pisan Cantos (56), and in addition to XVII Miner mentions specifically cantos III and XXI, and offers other examples from XI, XXVI, XXIX, LXXVII, LXXX, and LXXXIII. Canto XVII first appears in book publication in 38, and is reprinted in 41 and 57.