Ezra Pound and His Oh-So-Interesting Life (And Poetry)

Christina Bonvicin
3.6.09
Ezra Pound and His Oh-So-Interesting Life (And Poetry)

A Virginal by Ezra Pound
No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,
For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly
And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether;
As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness.
Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness
To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.

No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour,
Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers.
Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches,
As winter's wound with her sleight hand she staunches,
Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour:
As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.

1.) I found out much about Ezra Pound and his life. He was American born but more based in Europe for living, and liked the Chinese and Japanese aspects of poetry, such as the clarity and precision of the poetry. The time in which he lived covered a wide range in times. He was born in 1885, and wrote mostly in the 1900s to the 1950s and 1960s. He was influenced by many things of the time, including politics and materialism, as slightly seem in his poem A Virginal. At least, as it is read by me I see the poem as a reference to materialism. This is shown in the line “I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,/For my surrounding air hath a new lightness.” It isn’t much materialism as it is devotion to his love, I want to say. But it seems to me materialism as he doesn’t want to soil himself with anything (anyone?) less than what he already has.

2.) Through a very close reading of the poem, I see that the how poem itself is a metaphor. Ezra Pound can be talking about many things. He can be talking about the change that politics made on his life, going from London to Italy and becoming a Fascist follower in the time he lived in Italy, saying about how the politic life of the Fascists couldn’t compare to any other government. Or he could be talking about the different movements of the time, such as the Imagism and Vorticism movements in Britain, where he lived for a time. Or you could simply take the poem at face value and see that Pound found a woman that he loved so much that he didn’t want anyone else.

Pound uses a rhyme scheme of ABBA CDDC in the first stanza, and EFGGEF in the second stanza. The GG rhyme in the second stanza is slant rhyme, so I included it as the same rhyme. The meter of the poem is very much the same, and Pound doesn’t use much flowery language to convey his thoughts, which is the Asian poetry styles coming through in his own poetry. The tone is that of a struggling man who is trying to keep himself in line so that way he doesn’t soil himself, as he believes he has the best thing that the world could give to him.

Masks by Ezra Pound
These tales of old disguisings, are they not
Strange myths of souls that found themselves among
Unwonted folk that spake an hostile tongue,
Some soul from all the rest who'd not forgot
The star-span acres of a former lot
Where boundless mid the clouds his course he swung,
Or carnate with his elder brothers sung
Ere ballad-makers lisped of Camelot?

Old singers half-forgetful of their tunes,
Old painters color-blind come back once more,
Old poets skill-less in the wind-heart runes,
Old wizards lacking in their wonder-lore:

All they that with strange sadness in their eyes
Ponder in silence o'er earth's queynt devyse?

3.) For the second poem by Pound I chose to read Masks, and I’m very glad I did. The poem is very good and I love it. There is a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA for the first stanza, CDCD for the second stanza, and EE for the third stanza, kind of reminding me of a Shakespearean sonnet though not in couplet form and not nearly as long. The poem, despite the title, doesn’t quite talk about masks per se, but rather starts off talking about masks not being a strange myth of an older time. Pound then goes into his second stanza talking about various jobs, such as a singer, poet, and painter, and then throws in wizards to bring a more science-fiction/fantasy element to the poem. And he ends his poem with a rather odd question, of wondering if they (the singer/painter/poet/wizard) ponder about the disposal of the earth’s old-fashioned charm. Over all the poem was hard to try and see what Pound was saying but I think I got a pretty good grasp of what Pound meant, as I did with A Virginal.

4.) I don’t believe there is anything about distinctly American about his writing, or if you can even consider Ezra Pound an American poet as he spent most of his life living in Europe. Though I believe that Pound was an American citizen as he was charged with treason for spreading his Fascist views through radio to the US. In any way, I cannot find anything in Pound’s poetry that makes his poetry distinctly American, or distinctly anything but poetry to be honest.


Sites I used for information:
Poets.org
American Poems
Wikipedia for background checks