y, takes on a greater emphasis, and the distance between Confucian order and the realities of prison life creates significant poetic tension.
Pound is furthermore concerned with the issues of communication and transmission. If the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit are to be reconciled, they are to be reconciled through poetry. And, without a means of transmitting this knowledge, ideals and reality can never meet. Pound insists that they can merge and that poetry exists as proof. Pound insists that poetry itself is the bridge between the abstract and the concrete.
Canto LXXX begins conversationally, as many of the Cantos do. The voice speaking, ambiguously identified as "Mr. A. Little or perhaps Mr. Nelson, or Washington" (Pound, Canto LXXX 507) is one of Pound's fellow inmates of the D.T.C. mulling over why he is incarcerated (Terrell 429). However, the reader might also detect Pound's sympathies underneath. The colloquial tone, combined with Pound's intellect and the gravity of the treason charge against Pound create an ironic context aro
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