Date of Submission
Fall 2011
Academic Program
Classical Studies
Project Advisor 1
Benjamin Stevens
Abstract/Artist's Statement
The title of my senior project is from a line of Jackson Mac Low’s procedural erasure of the Cantos, Words nd Ends for Ez, a book I discuss in the last chapter. Mac Low’s chance procedure erased the original meaning (and shape) of Pound’s words, leaving only fragments unloosed from their parent word and forced to hug the left-margin. I chose this title precisely because the two key words in it lack any obvious meaning, because they only make sense when the reader’s imagination attempts to restore them to their original sense-context. Guesswork. I like that “truction” suggests both “destruction” and “construction,” but also the sonic elision of “of structon” into “obstruction.” Anyone who’s read Pound before understands the associations. “Erants” suggests both “errancy” and “errantry.” Erring Ezra, Ezra-Errant, nds of construction or destruction. All these possibilities in quasi-etymologies, ghosts of words haunting their original text. They ask that you put them back. I want to try.
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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Durbin, Andrew, "Of trUction eraNts: On Benito Mussolini and Ezra Pound" (2011). Senior Projects Fall 2011. 22.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_f2011/22
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