"Canto I" by Ezra Pound

A reading of "Canto I" by Ezra Pound. With this descent into what Pound felt was the oldest part of Homer's _Odyssey_, Odysseus' journey to the Underworld to seek guidance from the blind seer Tiresias, Pound initiated his largest work, his epic poem _The Cantos_.

In this canto, the full power of Pound's genius is at work. The command of languages and diction and tone and prosody, the profound knowledge of literature and culture, the music of language at its highest, of narrative.

There are many controversies welling and warring about Pound. I won't address them here. Let's not grace them in comments; at his best, Pound was the genius T.S. Eliot called "Il miglior fabbro," and that is on full display in "Canto I."