Singing goats

"The Greek word tragoidea, from which our own word 'tragedy' is derived means nothing more than 'goat-song'," writes C.M Bowra in "Landmarks in Greek Literature." (p. 117).

Reading Ezra Pound and e.e. cummings again as I now am, I see their lives as tragic if not their writing. They make such a big deal about breaking rules, as if breaking rules was a kind of religion. The feeling amongst them must have been that everything had to start over, regenerate, be eaten down to the root for there to be any new life.

I think what was going on in that generation was a reforming of the American mind. There was a religious aspect to it –-cumming's father was a minister and good friends with William James.

So many botched lives, leading to Pound's 'botched' civilization--WW I and II--so that the literature of the time felt at the time like it had an importance it didn't have even in its attempt at reformation.

I've never heard goats sing, but I know they're useful in clearing brush from urban spaces and have seen them doing so.