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24 January 2005: Today I finished reading a book on Eliot and Pound by C. K. Stead. It was fair. I am bringing it up because of Stead's belief that poems that are left incomplete are superior to poems that are finished. He cites Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." I disagree. I think that for a poem to be successful it must be complete . . . in some way. "Kubla Khan" was incomplete as a narrative, but complete as a scene or mood.
Stead also refers to Pound's Cantos as incomplete, but not to be criticized for that. I agree that it is incomplete but consider it seriously flawed because of it. That parts of it are complete, and wonderful, saves it as a work of art. That it is brilliantly innovative makes it of the first importance to poetry, whatever one otherwise makes of it.
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