Russ Hair on Beam 5

Parts of BEAM 5 made sense to me but I didn't understand how it held together as a poem. After reading the following by Russ Hair, I found what I was missing!

“BEAM 5, The Voices,” ... is a particularly good example of Johnson’s bricolage because it draws on imagery from Book X of the Odyssey, offering a useful contrast with Pound’s use of the same text in Canto XXXIX.

Hair then goes on for several pages explaining what Pound did. He then makes a very detailed analysis of Johnson's poem which made me aware of of the variety in what I missed. Here is Haur's analysis of the lines at the beginning of the poem.

Johnson’s “loom” weaves together a number of themes. On the one hand, “loom” suggests the apparatus for making fabric, with “the x of the instant” visually recalling the warp and woof of woven fabric. On the other hand, “loom” also functions as a verb, with the suggestion that time looms in the poem, just as “Clouds loom below” in “BEAM 1.” Clearly discernible in North Point Press’s ARK: The Foundations [and the Flood edition shown here' is the infinity symbol “∞” in “loom.” This mathematical term introduces the idea of limitless, unbounded time. Indeed, temporality is implicit in the words “instant” and “time,” and in the word “eon” beginning the following stanza. Notably, this “time” is set against space, which, as “plenum” suggests, is filled by matter.

Hair cpntinues analysing the rest of the poem and then adds this summary how Johnson differes from Pound whhelps also explains why I much prefer Johnson.

The fundamental difference in reading Canto XXXIX and “BEAM 5” is that Johnson does not presume that his reader knows their Homer; neiither does he make it a prerequisite for understanding his poem. Although familiarity with the Odyssey does illuminate some of the text’s nuances, as we have seen, the poem largely operates via a more straightforward set of associations. Simply by recognizing the significance of the loom in “BEAM 5” enables a satisfying, if not exhaustive, reading of the poem.

P.S. Those more famlliar with myth than I am will recognize the signicance of "loom" is that it is the symbol of Circe and/or know that Book X of the Odyssey is about the encounter of Odysseus and his men with Circe. I still haven't read Circe, the recent best-selling novel by Madeline Miller.