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Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound. Some Points of Departure. Pound’s Poetics. "Make it new" . Imagism. "A Few Dont's for an Imagist" 1. To present a direct treatment of the thing described. 2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation of the image.

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Ezra Pound

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  1. Ezra Pound Some Points of Departure

  2. Pound’s Poetics • "Make it new"

  3. Imagism "A Few Dont's for an Imagist" • 1. To present a direct treatment of the thing described. • 2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation of the image. • 3. To compose on the order of musical cadence and phrasing, not according to strict, unvarying rhythms.

  4. Example "In a Station of the Metro“ The apparition of these faces in the crowd Petals on a wet, black bough

  5. In a letter to Iris Barry, Pound claimed to have reduced "the whole art" to: " a. concision, or style, or saying what you mean in the fewest and clearest words. b. the actual necessity for creating or constructing something; of presenting an image, or enough images of concrete things arranged to stir the reader".

  6. Critical Overview Robert DiYanni in Modern American Poets: Their Voices and Visions describes Pound's work as: "Reacting against tendencies in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Victorian and Edwardian verse--such as verbosity, didacticism, excessive ornamentation, and metrical regularity--the Imagists advocated precision and concreteness of detail, concentration of language, and a freshness of rhythmic cadence.  Pound saw the image as the poet's pigment, as the artist's way of making an impression visually, intellectually, and emotionally.

  7. Imagism and Vorticism • "In a poem of this sort ["In a Station of the  Metro or other imagist works], one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective". • The image is "that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time". • The vortex is the "radiant node or cluster; . . . from which, and through which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing."

  8. Points of Departure • What is the role of the poet or the artist in culture? • How is culture described in the poem? “There died a myriad,And of the best, among them,For an old bitch gone in the teeth,For a botched civilization, “ • How do the themes in this poem anticipate those in Eliot's The Wasteland? • What do the two metaphors comparing the poet to Odysseus in the first section of the poem and Antonio Pisano in the second half of the poem suggest to you? • What is the importance of the past in Pound's poetry?  • Does the poem hold out any hope for rebuilding and restoring life’s meaning?

  9. Some Possible Themes For Discussion • The profound disillusionment of the poet • The futility of poetic ambition • WWI and the waste of lives in war • Defending what clearly isn't worth defending • The Role of the Artist in Society • Loss of Values--personal and otherwise • The destructive consequences of materialism • Cultural Decay/Cultural Exhaustion • The Usable Past--retaining and renewing the great literature and history of the past

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