Pound On Shattuck Avenue

807 Words4 Pages
Throughout the history of mankind, literature has always been involved in our development. From the primitive caveman drawings to books of thousands and thousands of pages, it had never stopped evolving. Every once in awhile though, a bright mind steps up and challenges everything we’ve once know and puts us all in awe. Tom Clark, author of “Thinking about Pound on Shattuck Avenue”, is no exception. Clark starts the poem off with its title, “Thinking about Pound on Shattuck Avenue”; from there, we already have 2 allusions which are Pound, referring to Ezra Pound, and Shattuck Avenue, a major city street running north-south through Berkeley, California. Ezra Pound was an American poet who was a major figure in the early modernistic movements in poetry and became known for developing Imagism. Shattuck Avenue serves as the setting of the poem that’s known for its large density of restaurants, which will also have a part later in the poem. The following line, combined with the first line, can be interpreted as: “Thinking about modern poetry is very uncommon,” since genuflecting is the act of bending the knee in worship. Now, one does not worship in hiking boots. Take Christianity and Islam, for example. They are two of the biggest faiths in the world. Both worship in formal attires (Christianity in Church, and Islam twice a day). In the next 4 lines, Clark talks of how “genuflecting in hiking boots…” is a classic [example] of being “overequipped”. What he is implying is that modern poetry has become too stylish with too many unnecessary words. The same applies to the “additional drops…. To make a wave”. How much unnecessary words (“additional drops”), is needed to make a full poem (wave)? The last few lines are hug: “Forlorn as a driftwood, The ABC of Reading sits untouched…”. The ABC of Reading is a book by Ezra Pound that talks about the appreciation and
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