Tim Romano wrote:

> Carroll,
>
> "... had its origins _in the events_ recounted in this poem".

Yup -- I didn't read your post carefully enough. But now I have
a question. Are you saying that in some sense the events of the
poem *happened*? That on some particular day Pound stood
in the woods and had certain experiences which he then tried
to enact in the poem? I'm interested.

My own first reaction on just now reading "The Tree" is that I
don't believe Pound. That is, from about *Lustra* (1915) on
when I read a poem of Pound's or a line in the *Cantos* I
"Believe" it in the sense that I believe that the poem's *persona*
really did believe or in some sense experience what he is
saying. When I read "The Tree" it seems to me that the poet
thinks he *ought* to think or feel that way -- but I think he's
lying. The rhythms are too flat -- and the tree created in the
poem doesn't seem to have much connection, in the poet's
own feeling, either to Baucis and Philemon or to Daphne.

I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

Carrol Cox