Ezra Pound was a tortured soul.
And we love him for it.
His writing is unconventional. His rhythm is sporadic. He is a modernist, a man who knew no imitations of the past.
In Portrait d’une Femme (translated to portrait of a lady) Pound tells the tragedy of a woman who has lost her identity. In modern lingo, you could say “she got burned” by Pound. In the beginning of the poem, he describes the things that this woman holds onto –old gossip, oddments of all things, strange spars of knowledge.
In line 19, he says some of these things “might prove useful and yet never proves.” This woman apparently has potential to live outside of her idols and addictions, but cannot unleash the grasp in some way.
In the midst of all this, Pound says in line 30 that there’s “Nothing that’s quite your own/Yet this is you.”
The lady has spent her life storing up these fleeting things she views as treasures. As this has defined her, she now is left with nothing.
This poem is subtle in its bite, but once discovered, is a very powerful reading into a woman who has lost herself.
Not that Pound should be talking. Reading his introduction certainly shed light on his whirlwind of a life hating America, serving Mussolini and being transmitted to a psychiatric ward. He was a man who couldn’t find his place in the world with it showing in many parts of his poetry (with his Cantos epitomizing his erratic and peculiar personality).
Speaking of the Cantos, XVII appears like it could have turned into an epic as he represents ancient myth and Renaissance history. The canto is apparently on the topic of Venice and the various gods that live and dwell inside it. Yet there is no coherent development of events that really make sense. It surely takes a high level of study and routine readings to come some sort of consensus on what he is trying to say.
His poem A Pact appears more like a satirical jest rather than a genuine letter to Walt Whitman himself. After adamantly showing his loathe for Whitman, he writes “I have dested you long enough / I come to you as a grown child / Who has had a pig-headed father / I am old enough now to make friends.”
Ironically, Whitman died when Pound was only seven. Instantly, this pact certainly is viewed as an even greater snag at Whitman, especially when considering this pact appears to be one-sided.
In a Station of the Metro is an extremely short poem—a whole two lines. As Pound describes the scene in a Paris subway, not a single verb is found in the poem. This is a poem that shows Pound’s tendency towards imagist poetry, which is an attempt at sharp and definitive language.
In analyzing the poem, it feels as if two separate parts of a poem are somehow mixed together to create a jumbled mess. I follow him in the first line, but the second line “Petals on a wet, black bough” confuses the heck out of me. Maybe he is looking out the window while in the subway? Maybe he felt the same emotion in these two settings and is linking them together? Maybe he’s just crazy? While we can confirm the third question, it still doesn’t answer the questions of the poem. Yet this is why Pound is fascinating to analyze—no matter how you interpret his poems, you’re bound to think out of the box, outside convention and inside a world of insanity.
The way you connect Pound's life to various poems is helpful. Portrait d’une Femme was a very interesting poem, and here you illuminated some points of it I missed the first time around, especially the woman's potential for change. The short portion of the cantos we read for class was insufficient for me as well, as far as reaching an idea about the overall theme goes, but they showed Pound to be skilled in crafting description. He also managed the repetition of the "green clear, blue clear" lines very well. Personally, I'm not too sure about the second line of In a Station of the Metro, but I find it strangely rhythmic and haunting.
ReplyDeleteI agree that "The Pact" seemed very sarcastic and it felt more like a jest then an actual compliment. I also thought that the Portrait d'une Femme was a very intriguing poem and was very thought provoking. You do make a good point about how the poem is about a woman who lost her identity. When I read it I thought it was a woman who just wanted to be someone else or who was discontent with the life which was her reality. But your point about how she lost her identity sums up all the things I thought while reading it.
ReplyDeleteI took a different approach to "Portrait d'une Femme" though drew many of the same conclusions... but given that Pound was an Imagist (albeit over-zealous...) I saw it as him looking at this painting/portrait and speculating, creating a narrative based on what he observed.
ReplyDeleteAs such I don't know if I'd call Pound crazy so much as idealistic and misguided in terms of his politics and art, narrow about his inspirations at best and academic at worst. He very clearly built his whole life around art, its life and survival. His view may be microcosmic, perhaps self-centered, but I'd still call them relevant and valuable.