Pound's diction is not uniformly "high toned". I wonder how much of his
poetry you have actually read? I don't mean this as a snide remark; I
mean, did the allusions you did not recognize and/or the languages you did
not understand prevent you from reading the poems? Have you read any of
Pound's early works?
"A Girl"
The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast--
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.
Tree, you are,
Moss, you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child--SO high--you are,
And all this is folly to the world.
or
"Of Jacopo Del Sallaio"
THIS man knew out the secret ways of love,
No man could paint such things who did not know.
And how she's gone who was his Cyprian,
And you are here who are "The Isles" to me.
And here's the thing that lasts the whole thing out:
The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.
What's so "high-toned" about the diction in those poems? There's a
classical allusion in the first poem, true, but shouldn't the reader be
willing to read classical myths? After all, they did provide the basis for
most allusion in the western literary tradition. And the second poem
alludes to some paintings, one of them by a Florentine (Botticelli's
assistant) and the other, appropriately given the them of the poem, by a
relative contemporary (for early Pound).
I would suggest that you simply 'fess up to some ignorance and reconsider
the phrase "littering his poetry". He who asks is a fool for a minute; he
who does not is a fool for life.
http://www.artmagick.com/images/j/ryland/ryland13.jpg
Tim Romano
At 11:29 AM 1/31/03 -0500, you wrote:
>What was Pound's general pupose in littering his poetry, especially the
>Cantos, with fairly obscure references, foreign phrases and dropped names? I
>wonder how this tendency gels with Imagist rule no. 1: "To use the language
>of common speech, but to employ the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor
>the merely decorative word."
>
>I would argue that Pound's reluctance to let go of the mythical references
>of which he was so fond, combined with a high-toned diction, ultimately
>restricted his ability to produce resonant poetry. Pound deserves great
>credit for his part in the Imagist movement, but he was not the most
>accomplished practitioner. I don't think this is entirely the poet's fault.
>We are all products of our times. T.S. Eliot's poetry sprung from the same
>classical groundings, as evidenced be _The Waste Land_ and _Prufrock_, among
>other examples. But Eliot also knew how to cut to the quick of the human
>condition with the language of common speech: "I shall wear the bottoms of
>my trousers rolled." So even if Pound was "il miglior fabbro" (another
>reference), Eliot was a better poet.
>
>Now this is not to say that Pound did not have his successes and that he
>always leaned on his litany of references to achieve his effect. I simply
>maintain that he was perhaps too much a die-hard intellectual to really
>produce poetry that matched his own Imagist standards.
>
>I welcome your comments.
>
>Brennen Lukas
>Annandale, Virginia
>
>
>>
>>But Pound's writing, line by line, is perfectly clear. The references,
>>foreign phrases, can be cleared up with a gloss, or one can skip them to
>>begin with.
>
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