Pound's "Metro" poem an example of what Stein means when she describes composition?

Subject: Re: now: Stein on composition
To: fip@sas.upenn.edu (Faye C Ip)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 06:24:51 -0400 (EDT)

Faye and all:

According to Faye's very nice explanation of the second part, Pound's
"Metro" poem might be an example: "these faces in the crowd" are the poem
and the poem is about how the people are the composing of them poem. Make
sense?

The one place where "Metro" fails to embody Stein's high standards for
what composition is...is my favorite part: 
	
	of the time in which they are living

--a phrase that seems to suggest that the composition must be historical
in some sense; must show the traces or inscriptions of history. "Metro" I
think fails on that score.

--Al



| 
| The second part:
| They, the people, are the composing of the composition - the process of 
| creating writing/poetry (NOT the creators of writing/poetry, because 
| Stein purposely said "composing" and not "composer") - that at the time 
| they are living (see def. of "living" above) [the composition] is the 
| composition (WARNING: this "composition" is NOT the same "composition" as 
| the other ones; this "composition" means "conglomeration" or "the putting 
| together of", while the other "composition" just means "writing") of the 
| time in which the people are living, are exercising their intellectual 
| capacity to the fullest.  So...the writing/poetry is the conglomeration 
| of intellectuals' "carbon copy" of everything that the intellectual 
| capacities produce, and the people are the process during which this 
| writing/poetry is created.
| 
| 
| Faye
| 

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