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. 3. To compose on the order of musical cadence and phrasing, not according to strict, unvarying rhythms.

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

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".

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.

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."

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?

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