The Comparison Between Ezra Pound’s Short and Long Poems

2018 Words9 Pages
The Comparison between Ezra Pound’s Short and Long Poems As the father of modernism which is the main stream of literature in the twentieth century, Ezra Pound definitely plays a predominant role in the evolution of modernist poetry. Its starting point is Imagism. Ezra Pound’s Imagist theory is mainly based on the aesthetic theories proposed by W. B. Yeats, Ford Madox Ford and T. E. Hulme. Yeats is famous for a symbolist who emphasizes subjective conception and imaginative association, but this school tends to lapse into sentimentality; Ford is famous for an impressionist who emphasizes objective writing with clarity and precision, but this school tends to lapse into the level of description. Pound absorbs the strengths of Yeats’ subjectivity and Ford’s objectivity and finds a way to make natural objects convey subjective emotion by virtue of association of the mind. As a very influential theorist of modernist poetry, T. E. Hulme also exerts great influence on Pound. Hulme denounces romantic aesthetics while advocates precision of statement and simplicity of form. He proposes the use of clear, visual imagery in poetry. Hulme is mainly responsible for working out the principles on which the Imagist Movement is founded. He advocates hard, clear and condensed image. Later, inspired by American sinologist Ernest Fenollosa’s theory on the Chinese writing characters, Pound establishes the Ideogrammic Method, whose aim is to combine abstract concept with concrete particulars by juxtaposition of distinct elements in a poem to produce intense effect. Thus, Pound sets up his own mature and systematic thought. This essay chooses three representative poems of Ezra Pound. The two shorter poems are “In a Station of the Metro” and “The Jewel Stairs’ Grievance”, and the longer poem is “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”. Published in 1913 in the literary magazine
Open Document