Upon reading [Ernesto Cardenal's poetry] and being hit on the head by the striking and continuous similarities to Pound's poetry in so much of Cardenal's work, you do not get the impression that he is a young poet feeling his way, learning through imitation; these are not the first, promising efforts of a budding genius. You do not get the impression that he is going on to something else, to "find his own voice," etc. No. This is it. This is his own voice, and these poems are no fumbling, no lucky, naïve, "early work." They are memorable poems; rounded, masterful, mature work. This is it, all right. This is Ernesto Cardenal.

There seems to be a problem here.

Ernesto Cardenal copies Pound. Well, he does. Anybody can see that. In that case, why have Cardenal at all? Why not eliminate him and stick to Pound? (pp. 36-7)

Cardenal has something to offer us that Pound does not offer, and it is not just a matter of language. Even a good translation of all of Pound into Spanish could not possibly replace Cardenal's poetry. So something has changed, something has been added, making Cardenal's poetry worthwhile to readers of Spanish and even justifying the translation of his poetry into English. There we have it: there is a similarity, a remarkable similarity, which is the main subject of this article. And there is a difference. The result is poetry worth reading and translating, poetry which moves, which sticks in the mind and even, I would venture to say, is likely to influence some people's view of the world. Ernesto Cardenal is a great poet despite the fact that he obviously copies Pound….

Cardenal is a great poet, but not an inventor of forms. After all, how many poets are? And … he merely took a form, a structure, a pattern which Pound had invented, and used it for his own purposes, filled it with his own content. A Latin American content. (p. 37)

As I see it Cardenal's poetry falls roughly into three batches:

a) The short, epigrammatic poems. No need to overstress Pound's influence here since, guided or not by Pound, Cardenal had recourse to Pound's Latin models, and it is to them that final reference should be made. (pp. 37-8)

Incidentally, these short poems of Cardenal seem to have sparked or, perhaps, reinforced, a whole new trend among some of the younger Latin American poets.

b) The longer, canto-like poems where Pound's influence is unquestionable and unquestioned. Cardenal himself willingly admits it.

c) The rest of Cardenal's poems stemming from various other sources, although nearly always playing very closely on the original models, in a way reminiscent of Pound's personae. In Cantares Mexicanos I and II and Netzahualcóyotl we get a blend of b and c where, using the basic canto form, he sticks so steadily to the style of the Náhuatl originals, or rather to the Spanish versions of them, that the effect is quite different from either the canto or the Náhuatl poems.

Of these three categories the only one that concerns me here is b, since though Pound can hardly be said to have invented the epigram, although he may have reactivated it, we can safely say that Pound invented the Canto. (p. 38)

In the first place, of course, the idea itself: history into poetry, but direct from the sources as often as possible and convenient. Since this history can be from any period, including the contemporary, the sources are of all kinds: histories, documents, letters, newspapers, books, anecdotes, personal recollections, etc. Either the exact words, or the style of the original are kept. Where the poet substitutes his own voice for the sources, he usually either imitates them or keeps to a terse, matter-of-fact retelling. This characteristic shows up very clearly on comparing Cardenal's poetry to Neruda's Canto General. Setting aside the metrical differences that are immediately obvious, you see an entirely different emotional approach to the matter at hand. Neruda is always exhorting or declaiming or dramatically questioning the reader. He is always present as first-person in the poem. This Whitmanesque attitude is radically different from the "reportage" attitude of Pound and Cardenal, which is strongly reminiscent of Brecht's approach: don't get the spectator emotionally involved, present the material and let him think for himself—but of course they do get the reader emotionally involved, they just go about it differently. This difference is quite enough to explain why, even though the subject matter of Neruda and Cardenal is more than similar—it is, in fact, nearly identical—the poetry is so different.

The dominant tone is usually one of plain statement or quotation: however, at times, it is much more cantabile. We get passages of a sustained, descriptive lyricism (or what I would call lyricism) where the intense beauty and harmony of nature or of a certain social order or life style are presented. This is more frequent in Cardenal, perhaps, than in Pound, and in these passages Cardenal indulges in a greater fluidity, linking each line to the next to make the general effect more singing and harmonious and carry the reader forward constantly. In the reportage passages the lines coincide more frequently with complete statements, stopping short at the end, achieving in this way a certain finality, and reinforcing the non-subjective attitude. I suppose one could say that Pound is more frequently choppy and Cardenal more frequently fluid.

The presentation is fundamentally that of the collage, the juxtaposition of fragmented material producing frequent and ever richer cross-references and slowly building up several levels of meaning.

The number of lines per canto and the length of the lines follow no set rule.

There are no rhymes at the end of the lines linking them in a set pattern; however, rhymes do occur quite often by repetition of words, or stems of words, or whole phrases, either at the end of lines or at the end of one line and in the middle or even at the beginning of another, or after intervening lines. Where they do occur, these rhymes serve a purpose related to the content.

You sometimes get whole chunks of poetry which seem to follow a rhythmical pattern clearly recognizable to the ear and the emotional response, but difficult or impossible to reduce to metrical rules…. [In] reading Cardenal I very often came across lines or sets of lines strongly reminiscent of Pound's from a rhythmical, aural point of view. So close as to be echoes, and often of a very poignant beauty.

Part of the reason for the Poundian ring to many of Cardenal's lines, and probably linked to the rhythm, is the syntactical peculiarity which distinguishes so many of them: inversion of the usual word order, elimination of, say, verbs, or of conjunctions or prepositions, use of nouns or participles instead of verbs, etc. (pp. 38-9)

There is also what I would call Pound's bag of tricks or rhetorical devices:

a) Repetition at long intervals of a single line (or word or phrase) with slight variations, tying the whole poem or series of poems together and giving a sub-theme or meaning….

b) The use of words, phrases or sentences in parentheses as commentaries or reminders.

c) The capitalization of words and sentences either as a kind of visual shouting (Pound either realized or fancied that most people are deaf) or because these words or sentences are brand names or advertisements usually seen capitalized in print or signs.

d) The use of numbers, as a non-poetic intrusion into the poem and as a reference (sometimes ironic) to our number-ridden society, or to stress that what he is telling about actually happened.

e) The use of concrete, factual detail, here again to impress on the reader that what he is telling about actually happened.

f) The insertion of a single emotionally charged line in the middle of matter treated in a different, more prosaic way….

g) The use of names and surnames of individuals, sometimes principal, sometimes very secondary characters.

h) The use of quotations in quotation marks.

i) The way of cutting into quotations, beginning them in mid-sentence, or breaking them off, thus heightening the dramatic effect and sometimes giving depth by oblique reference to the unquoted part.

j) The use of fragmentation or interruption, applied not only to quotations but to sentences or trains of thought, sometimes for economy, sometimes for drama, sometimes for both.

k) The use of words and sentences in foreign languages.

l) The explanation of same in parentheses next to the original word or sentence.

m) The use of repetition, not as in a) but in immediate or nearly immediate lines, in order to rub something in or explore different variations of meaning….

n) The use of anecdotes as illustrations of meaning or as part of the story.

And, of course, although this has to do with content and not with form, one shouldn't forget the presence in Cardenal of certain recurring themes which form part of the basic conceptual network of his poetry, as of Pound's. These themes are the corrupting effect of moneymaking as the overriding value in a society; the importance of precision and truthfulness in language; the degradation of human values in the world which surrounds us; the search through the past (or, in Cardenal's poetry, in more "primitive" societies, a kind of contemporary past) for better world-models. (p. 40)

It might be pertinent here to indicate the similarity of the uses to which the Canto has been put, first by Pound and then by Cardenal: recreation of historical periods, both ancient and contemporary; biography; catchall for scraps of political, economic, philosophical theorizing; recreation of literary precedents and myths. It might justifiably be argued that Cardenal has used the Canto for all of them, but especially for the first two, in his recreation of the Spanish conquests, the pre-Columbian theocracies, the Somoza dictatorship and contemporary political scene in Central America, and the biographies of tyrants and indigenous leaders. When he uses it to sing the exploits of sixteenth-century conquerors or twentieth-century guerrillas, it becomes, even more than in Pound's hands, a canción de gesta, a song of action, and Cardenal rightly steps up the tempo, drops distracting elements, and gets closer to a good cowboy movie than to a Pound Canto in his effects. (p. 41)

And now, perhaps, it is time to point out the differences between Cardenal's cantos and Pound's. These differences can be boiled down to a more classical approach, a sparer and more economical and functional use of the resources discovered by Pound. A greater consideration for the reader, and a willingness to seduce him instead of making demands on him.

Where Cardenal uses Pound's break-off, juxtapositions, contrasts, and similar, effective but potentially confusing techniques, he does so more sparingly, leaving the structure much more visible to the naked eye than does Pound, easier to grasp and appreciate esthetically, less cluttered or hazy, and demanding less concentration and effort on the part of the reader.

On occasion, as I mentioned before, Cardenal presents his material in a highly dramatic way, creating a mounting suspense reminiscent of a good adventure movie that completely overwhelms the reader—any reader—and makes it impossible for him to put the book down until he finishes the poem….

Cardenal makes few if any demands on the reader's previous education. This does not mean that there are not abundant literary and historical references in his work. (There are, and it is significant that the ordinary Latin American with a middling traditional education spots them easily.) Rather, I mean that Cardenal has realized Pound's fond hope that the reader would not need anything but the poems themselves in order to understand everything in them. I am afraid Pound was mistaken in this illusion in regard to his own Cantos, but Cardenal seems to me to have succeeded where Pound failed. I think any Spanish or Latin American reader with a secondary or even a good grade-school education—which would ordinarily include a sketchy working knowledge of the Spanish conquest, of the great pre-Columbian civilizations and of the contemporary political scene—needs no reference books for a satisfactory reading of Cardenal's Cantos.

Perhaps another and deeper difference is that Cardenal is rooted in a wider cultural conscience. Where Pound seems to spring up disconnected from his own contemporary cultural scene and to be working against it, putting his roots through books into the past, Cardenal is born into a ready-made cultural context and shared political conscience. Cardenal's past is common to all Latin Americans. His present is likewise common to all Latin Americans. He speaks to those who are ready and willing to hear him and are likely to agree on a great many points. (p. 42)

Isabel Fraire, "Pound and Cardenal," in Review, No. 18, Fall, 1976, pp. 36-42.