A Guide to the Paths


1. The Entrance Gates

Radiant Obstacle

Radiant Obstacle takes you in sequence through the heart of the whole poem, a matrix of 49 poems. These include many fine individual short poems, such as Back Late/For Anna, Regardes des Vacances, or Thinking of Mansfield Park. Do not be alarmed that there are gaps in the text: you can consider how meaning always includes lacunae, or even just that poetry is banal, ludicrous and holy.

This: The Supplement

This: The Supplement Occupying the same locus as Radiant Obstacle, is a sequence of 8 or 9 poems, which you are invited to visit individually. You may want to sample The Royal, or Sacerdotal, Art, an alchemical injunction, or The Old Poet, a sequence thinking on Pound's old age, or Songs for Dead Children, a sequence starting out from translations of the texts of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder.

The Symbolic and the Veil of Maia

The Symbolic and the Veil of Maia enables you to enter the chronologically earliest elements of the poem, and that initial party on New Year's Day.

What Follows After

What Follows After This sequence comes best towards the conclusion of the experience of the whole text, though it's up to you of course. You are invited to pick out some individual choices, such as The Return, a poem from 1971, or Four Final Puppet Songs, which translate the texts of Strauss's Vier letzte Lieder.

Why We Are Children

1982: Why We Are Children It is a theoretical possibility to enter the poem as 1982 begins – but this is not a recommended entry point.


2. The Guides

You will find other, similar waymarks to these introduced through the texts, some of which will give you the opportunity to venture into other regions, while others are short cuts. Follow them as you will!


3. The Music

audio will start the music playing.


4. The Exits

EXIT will lead you completely out of the poem, back to this page.

exit on the other hand will return you to the homepage for either This: The Supplement or What Follows After. Note that the colour of the exit signs may vary depending on where you are within the poem.