Thank you Jacob, for this important information.  Stephen's remark that
these spacings in Pound's poem enhance the phanopoeia ("wetblack") seems to
me to be on the money, but only with respect to line 2, in the isolation of
the image "wet, black" which functions like an ideogram ( "wet" +
"black" ) -- at least as Pound understood the operation of the Chinese
written character (see ABC of Reading).  But in line 1, the spacings
coincide with natural syntactic breaks, as do the spacings between "Petals"
and "on" and between.  "black" and "bough" in line 2.

"White space" has been of interest to me in the context of the Old English
poem that has been called The Wanderer, in which the varying amount of space
between words and chunks of words reflects both meter and pronunciation --
see my E-Edition of the OE poem at  www.aimsdata.com/tim if you're
interested.  I recall there was some notice here, maybe a year ago, of an
electronic edition of Pound's poetry which was going to preserve the
manuscript spacings.  I don't remember whether that project was well
underway or only a proposal. Anyone know the status?

Tim Romano



----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen & Ruth Adams" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2000 8:04 AM
Subject: Re: Eisenstein and Pound


> Jacob Korg wrote:
>
> > The punctuation of In a Station of the Metro is only half the story. As
it
> > first appeared in Poetry in 1913, there were significant spaces between
> > the words. I don't have it with me, but it looked something like this:
> >
> >                         The apparition    of these faces    in the crowd
> >                         Petals    on a wet,  black   bough.
> > As far as I know, the poem has never been reprinted that way.
> >
> >                                         J, Korg
>
> This printing of "Metro" long puzzled me.  It seemed to indicate something
> rhythmical, but I could make no case for it.  But I think this is not what
EP was
> after;  instead, I think the effect is one of phanopoeia.  When the eye
sees the
> bough, it does not see wetness plus blackness;  it sees "wetblack."  Does
this
> seem reasonable?
>                             Stephen Adams
>                             University of Western Ontario
>
>