Aya Boye U16107003

Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound was born on October 30, 1885 in Hailey, Idaho. He was the only child of Homer and Isabel
Pound. At the age of 15 Pound was accepted into the University of Pennsylvania's College of Liberal Arts
in 1901. He received his masters of Arts degree and graduated in 1906. After graduating from college
Pound started teaching French and Spanish at Wabash College in Indiana. He was dismissed for
deliberately provoking school authorities. Pound’s poetry reflects a deep interest in the past, particularly
of ancient cultures. He had a great interest and was influenced by Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish.

Pound in the company of Hilda Doolittle and her husband Richard Adlington, and Frank Flint started a
movement called “ Imagism” led by Pound to encourage authors to discard traditional forms, techniques,
and ideas. Imagist poets focused their writing on simple images and attempt to use words to paint pictures
in their readers’ minds. They were influenced by Japanese haiku poems of seventeen syllables which
usually present only two juxtaposed images.

Imagism is the usage of two juxtaposed images to create one. The poem must include four elements, time,
location, season, and the poet’s attitude.

The Rules of Imagism

Ezra Pound, being one of the founders of Imagism, said that there were three tenets, or rules, to writing
Imagist poetry.

 Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective

 To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation
 As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the
metronome

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough.

We have two images in this poem as per imagist poems. The first one is in the first verse, “The apparition
of these faces in the crowd:” the speaker is in a crowded subway station, where people appear like
"apparitions"—or ghostly, fleeting images—as they pass by. The second image is in the second verse,
“Petals on a wet, black bough.” Which suggests umbrellas that are wet under the rain and then we
combine both and get the full image of a crowded metro station which people holding umbrellas in a
rainy day. This poet sympathizes with these hardworking people on the train everyday from home to work
and vice versa to make a living and they are often tired and sad do to the hard work they’re put under. We
have the 4 elements here, location, Paris metro station, season, spring, time of the day which is evening
and the poet’s attitude which is sympathizing with those workers. We have the 4 elements here, location,
a metro station in Paris, season, spring, time of the day which is evening and the poet’s attitude which is
sympathizing with those workers.

A Fan-piece for Her Imperial Lord

O fan of white silk,

clear as frost on the grass-blade,
You also are laid aside.

The first image here is of a fan of white silk which is the most expensive and rare type of silk that was
primarily in China. The title suggests that the poem is ancient, in the time where there were empires in
China. The fan is described as clear which suggests transparency, purity, and beauty just as the white
suggests but frost is only temporary, it is only as the sun rises it disappears. The second image a woman
lying beside the fan, thrown away. When the two images are juxtaposed, they make an image of a crying
woman, expensive, white, young woman thrown away in a very cold wintery morning with her fan when
her imperial lord was done abusing and using her and wanted someone. The also at the last verse suggests
the dehumanizing nature of this situation when she is compared to a fan thrown away when not needed or
wanted. We have the 4 elements here, location, Chinese empire, season, winter, time of the day which is
morning when the gates of the palace open and the poet’s attitude which is sympathizing this young and
beautiful lady being used by an emperor and treated like a slave and then thrown away.

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

BY EZRA POUND
After Li Po

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chōkan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever, and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed

You went into far Ku-tō-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me.
I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Chō-fū-Sa.
The speaker in this poem is a river merchant’s wife who is lovely and hasn't seen her husband for a very
long time (five months), so she decides to write him a letter. In the letter, she reminisces about her
husband and how they first met at the age of fourteen where they did not seem to get along at first. Then,
when she was fifteen, the wife started to feel more settled in the marriage and became enchanted with her
husband. She “desired” to join her husband in both temporal and ethereal realms.
When she turned sixteen, her husband had to go to work and was gone for months. While the husband
travels and sells his goods, the wife writes to him about the many beautiful things he's missing and how
she cannot wait for him to get home. The wife seems to be referring to death indirectly within the poem
where there are many symbols of death. She seems to have a feeling that her husband is dead but does not
want to admit to it and so she waits.
The last stanza of the poem is a powerful expression of the wife’s feelings and an attempt to demonstrate
to the river-merchant how she has grown into a mature and more complete stage of love. Her references
to the seasonal changes in the natural world indicate that she no longer entertains a concept of a
theoretical love which is “forever and forever and forever” but has realized that nothing can exist outside
of time.