Sleeping on the Wing Challenge: Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

[Angeline]

Here's a poet known for his influence on modern poetry and critical work with his contemporaries (most famously, T.S. Eliot). In fact, he's probably best-known for his editorial work on Eliot's The Wasteland. Ezra Pound has always been something of an enigma to me, so maybe this challenge will be illuminating for me, help me understand him better. Maybe you, too.

I suppose I should add that he is also rather famously known for having been anti-Semetic, but I'm focusing on his poetry, not his politics or his "isms." I'm also very comfortable with Pablo Neruda's poetry in spite of his Stalinist connections. If Pound's anti-Semetism bothers you to the point where you don't want to play in this challenge, wait a week: there'll be someone new.

So here we are in Week Two of the challenge and, like last week's, this thread will be sticky for a week (i.e., till the 23rd). You can certainly write to this challenge after that time, but this coming week will be prime for adapting Ezra's style into your own poetry and discussing his and your poems.

First, some poems:

The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played at the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-sa.
~Li Po; translated by Ezra Pound

********************
Separation on the River Kiang

Ko-Jin goes west from Ko-kaku-ro,
The smoke-flowers are blurred over the river.
His lone sail blots the far sky.
And now I see only the river,
___The long Kiang, reaching heaven.
~Li Po; translated by Ezra Pound

********************

Taking Leave of a Friend

Blue mountains to the north of the walls,
White river winding around them;
Here we must make separation
And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass.

Mind like a floating wide cloud,
Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances
Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance.
Our horses neigh to each other
______as we are departing.
~Li Po; translated by Ezra Pound

********************
The Garret

Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are.
Come, my friend, and remember
____that the rich have butlers and no friends,
And we have friends and no butlers.
Come, let us pity the married and the unmarried.

Dawn enters with little feet
____like a gilded Pavlova,
And I am near my desire.
Nor has life in it aught better
Than this hour of clear coolness,
____the hour of waking together.

********************
The Garden

En robe de parade.--Samain

Like a skien of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
____of a sort of emotional anaemia.

And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.

In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
____will commit that indiscretion.

********************
Sestina: Altaforte

LOQUITUR: En Bertans de Born.
Dante Alighieri put this man in hell for that he was a stirrer up of strife. Eccovi! Judge ye! Have I dug him up again? The scene is at his castle, Altaforte. “Papiols” is his jongleur. “The Leopard,” the device of Richard Coeur de Lion.

I

Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.
You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let’s to music!
I have no life save when the swords clash.
But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing
And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,
Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.

II

In hot summer I have great rejoicing
When the tempests kill the earth’s foul peace,
And the lightning from black heav’n flash crimson,
And the fierce thunders roar me their music
And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,
And through all the riven skies God’s swords clash.

III

Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing,
Spiked breast to spiked breast opposing!
Better one hour’s stour than a year’s peace
With fat boards, bawds, wine and frail music!
Bah! there’s no wine like the blood’s crimson!

IV

And I love to see the sun rise blood-crimson.
And I watch his spears through the dark clash
And it fills all my heart with rejoicing
And pries wide my mouth with fast music
When I see him so scorn and defy peace,
His long might ‘gainst all darkness opposing.

V

The man who fears war and squats opposing
My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson
But is fit only to rot in womanish peace
Far from where worth’s won and the swords clash
For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing;
Yea, I fill all the air with my music.

VI

Papiols, Papiols, to the music!
There’s no sound like to swords swords opposing,
No cry like the battle’s rejoicing
When our elbows and swords drip the crimson
And our charges ‘gainst “The Leopard’s” rush clash.
May God damn for ever all who cry “Peace!”

VII

And let the music of the swords make them crimson!
Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
Hell blot black for alway the thought “Peace!”

********************

Alba

As cool as the pale wet leaves of lily of the valley
She lay beside me in the dawn.

********************

Whew, huh? Think on these for a while. If you'd like to read more of Pound's poetry, including some of his famous Cantos, you can try this site. I'll be back with more information about him (and the exercise) in a bit.

 

[Angeline]

Ezra: The 411

Ezra Pound, who started publishing his work early in this century, [Note: obviously the book from which this is excerpted was published in the twentieth, not the twenty-first, century. ~Ange] had very strong ideas about what poetry should be like. Through his own poems and through what he wrote about poetry, he probably had more influence on English and American poets than any other modern writer. There were certain things Pound didn't like about a lot of the poetry of the late nineteenth century and about the way people thought about and talked about poetry. He thought poetry should be strong and clear and truthful, should say things in as few words as possible, get straight to the point, and then stop, without flowery language, without moralizing or vagueness, without misty feelings. He didn't like the music made by regular meter and rhyme, but thought poetry should have a new music, plainer, less singsongy and less like a metronome. He saw something beautiful in the firmness and clarity of prose writing and thought poetry should have more of that quality. As for subject matter, he liked poetry that was about honest, plain feelings--love, desire, friendship, admiration, even hatred and aggression. Partly due to Pound's ideas and his poems, much poetry in English did become less flowery and less wordy; many poets gave up rhyme and meter; and more poets wrote more clearly. Yeats, Eliot, Williams [Note: William Carlos Williams ~Ange], and many other poets were influenced by his work.

_____Pound found the qualities he liked in poems written in certain other cultures and at other times and in other languages. He translated many of these poems, doing his best to keep in his English version the qualities of the original one. He thought it was just about as important to make a really good new translation of a great poem, one that was idiomatic and natural and clear, as it was to write a new poem. Pound translated Chinese poetry, Latin poetry, Provencal poetry (Provence is a part of southern France, which up until the thirteenth century had its own language and culture), and Japanese poetic plays. He also translated poems from German, French, Italian, Greek, and Anglo-Saxon. His translations are an important part of his work. Pound felt not only that translating brought poems back to life, but also that it was great preparation for a poet's own writing. His translations were also a way of showing people what poetry should be like.

_____"The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" is a translation of a poem by the great Chinese poet Li Po. The poem is about love, but says nothing about love directly. The young wife's restraint makes it even clearer that her love is deep and certain. It is unnecessary to explain your feelings when they are simple and strong and sure. She talks in the simple, tender way that people talk to each other when very much between them is already understood. She makes no reproach, no demand. She doesn't even ask him to come back. She just says, "If you are coming down through the narrows. . ." When she was with him, time passed, she changed, and she learned to love him deeply. Now time is passing again, she is changing again, but he isn't there. When she sees all around her the way time is passing, it hurts her, she feels it in his absence. She will make the time shorter, even if only by a little, by coming out to meet him on his way back. "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" is very different from the kind of exaggerated, overelaborate romantic love poetry that Pound so much disliked.

~ Excerpted from Sleeping on the Wing, Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell, editors

 

[Angeline]

And now, the exercise~

Write as many poems in response to this exercise as you want. You can write in any format: free verse, form poem, illustrated poem, whatever strikes your muse.

You have one week to respond to this challenge, so you must have at least one poem posted in this thread by Sunday, March 23, 2008. Let's say by midnight, PST. And remember, if someone critiques your poem, you must respond in kind. Or in other words, if you read a poem you want to critique, go for it. You'll get a review in return.


Exercise

Write a poem which, like "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" is also a letter. The person you write it to doesn't actually have to be far away. Write it, perhaps, to a good friend, or to someone you know very little but have thought about, or to someone you imagine, or maybe to someone you don't know if you'll ever see again. It can even be to someone who is dead. You might try organizing the poem in somewhat the same way Pound's is; that is, in each stanza you could talk about a different time in your life, a different age. It might be helpful to think of a certain day you remember very strongly when you were that age. Where exactly were you? And what were you doing, what did you wear, what was your hair like then? Was the person you are writing the letter to there? Instead of talking about your emotions, see if you can suggest them by talking about what you saw or said or did. In the last part of the poem, talk about what is happening to you now. Again, talk more about the weather, and the way everything looks, and what you are doing than about what you feel. Maybe the last stanza could, as in Pound's poem, contain a wish. Pound's poem doesn't begin with "Dear" or end with "Love," but you can begin and end your poem that way if you like. Or you can show that it's a letter only by its title.
~ Excerpted from Sleeping on the Wing, Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell, editors

Write! Good luck and have fun!

 

[champagne1982]

To The Man In The Okanagan

There was a time before this now, my flesh knew more
I dreamt I was wrapped in warmth, shielded from the wind.
It was merely a wash of waves, carrying me closer to shore.
You called a different bride to your side, married young
You didn't pause to see the seabird struggling in the surf.
Our lives were gone in different directions on this island,
Two illusory souls, unaware of other lives.

Born anew, I chased a hope that happiness lay in work.
I found pleasure in mending broken wings,
Power in engines of industry that moved my place
Around the world in the company of family.

On my return to home I needed death to show
My forgotten memory the hearth that warms me;
Sheilds me from the wind and though I am loathe
To leave this comfort I should someday remove
To those waves and wash against the shore.

If you call me then I'll know
Though ages and lives have passed
Forgotten, my wings shall fold, I'll fall
Against your warmth. Call my name
And lift my face to yours to share a smile.
Kiss me, for in this I'll know
The pleasure of cooking your meal,
Eating with you and see the joy
In merely being home where I belong.

 

[twelveoone]

To The Man In The Okanagan

There was a time before this now, my flesh knew more
I dreamt I was wrapped in warmth, shielded from the wind.
It was merely a wash of waves, carrying me closer to shore.
You called a different bride to your side, married young
You didn't pause to see the seabird struggling in the surf.
Our lives were gone in different directions on this island,
Two illusory souls, unaware of other lives.

Born anew, I chased a hope that happiness lie in work.
I found pleasure in mending broken wings,
Power in engines of industry that moved my place
Around the world in the company of family.

On my return to home I needed death to show
My forgotten memory the hearth that warms me;
Sheilds me from the wind and though I am loathe
To leave this comfort I should someday remove
To those waves and wash against the shore.

If you call me then I'll know
Though ages and lives have passed
Forgotten, my wings shall fold, I'll fall
Against your warmth. Call my name
And lift my face to yours to share a smile.
Kiss me, for in this I'll know
The pleasure of cooking your meal,
Eating with you and see the joy
In merely being home where I belong.

did you run through the exercises before hand?

anyway, I got your letter, I'll be over a five - but no liver

 

[champagne1982]

did you run through the exercises before hand?

anyway, I got your letter, I'll be over a five - but no liver

No, my library doesn't hold a copy of the text, so I don't have foreknowledge of the exercises.

I think reading the requirements carefully and then getting the poem down as it bangs on my skull serves pretty good in this challenge. So far, passion seems to dictate my response to the poets I'm emulating, we'll see what happens next.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

weird coincidence # 512:

I was just working on a letter to Wallace Stevens.

bj

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Letter to an unborn child

When I was very young and
the future seemed so cut and dried
to include all that I would wish for,
I thought in time that there you would be,
part of me and some husband chosen
for love and to produce a child
with hair of gold.

Then many years went by and
not the best of choices
but still within my heart you stayed
waiting this downy head
this child of mine unborn.

Now in my later years I finally concede
this child was never mine to own
yet as like in a memory
you are there in the corners
of my mind and speak to me
from the distance of the sureness
of childhood.

 

[Liar]

I never really got the hang of Ezra, and I'm not sure this is in his spirit really, but here goes, to the best of my abilitites...


To The Life Of My Love

I met you first at the dawn
of thirteen, when your feet
had not yet grown all the way
to the ground, when you wore
lavender and white and spoke
like a cloud of butterflies,

when I wore mis-matched socks
and blue jerseys and spoke
as little as possible,
in fear of renegade octaves.

You were the only one who leaned
close enough to hear me mumble
my name, and you wrote it into
your diary. But I had no words
back then to make you kiss me,
or wisdom to realize that's
what I wanted.

I met you next as a newborn man,
with a song in my throat and
a city in my hands, when I wore
red wine gloss on hungry lips
and shoes made for dancing,

when you wore jet black and
crimson and barbed wire, and
spoke like a swarm of hornets.

But I had words and wisdom now,
so I picked you up and carried
you home, and we spent a year
writing forbidden diary entries
into each others' skin.

And while one memory sprouted
legs and hobbled off, if only
for a while (and you tore those
pages out), every other tremble
is still lodged between white
leather on aging paper that will
outlive us both.

I met you last at the dawn
of thirty, when you wore moss
gray and green and spoke like
a garden of bumblebees, when
you carried your last diary page
against your chest, and hushed
my voice to a mumble so we
wouldn't wake her up.

And whatever words and wisdom
I had, you left me speechless.

 

[Angeline]

These are all such wonderful reactions to the exercise. (Champ, I think that may be one of the best poems I've ever read of yours!) I'm so glad we're trying it. Bij, your coincidence is too funny, and I'm looking forward to reading the poem.

Liar, I'm with you on Ezra: I've never really gotten my mind around him either and I'm hoping doing this exercise will give me a better understanding. I have about nine different "letters" in my head and I'm trying to figure out which way to go.

The only thing about this exercise (overall, not just Ezra) that's bugging me a little is that Emily Dickinson is the only female poet discussed in the book and Amiri Bakara (Leroi Jones), the only African American poet. It's starting to feel a little too "dead white men" to me. Anyone else picking up on that? I'm starting to think it would be good to try to add a little more bewbage and color (not to mention life!) to the selection. Anyone got any ideas on this? Maybe add someone like Kim Addonizio or Sandra Cisneros? Gwendolyn Brooks or Yousef Komunyakaa? Anyone feel qualified enough to recommend an exercise on any of these (or other) folks to make the selection more diverse? I know, for example, that RainMan and Tzara are both big fans of Kim Addonizio. Or I can try. Thoughts?

 

[Liar]

Thoughts?

Other than that every poet you mentioned, as well as the two we've looked at so far, is from the same country?

I would love to see you talented folks take a stab at the style of someone like Keorapetse Kgositsile. Or maybe Rumi. Just to see what happened.

 

[Angeline]

Other than that every poet you mentioned, as well as the two we've looked at so far, is from the same country?

I would love to see you talented folks take a stab at the style of someone like Keorapetse Kgositsile. Or maybe Rumi. Just to see what happened.

I know Rumi a little and Kgositsile not at all. The only Swedish poet I really know is Piet Hein. If I read some of the former two and try to come up with an exercise for each, will you help me? Look at what I've come up with and give me some feedback, so I'm not so far off the mark?

 

[Liar]

I know Rumi a little and Kgositsile not at all. The only Swedish poet I really know is Piet Hein.

...who is Danish.

And yes, of course, if I have something intelligent to contribute.

 

[Tzara]

I know, for example, that RainMan and Tzara are both big fans of Kim Addonizio.

I can't speak for Master P, but my own feeling for Ms. Addonizio goes rather beyond (ahem) some literary reaction to her fine poems.

Perhaps those feelings would better be discussed in another part of Literotica, hmmm?

Well. Just thinking about Kim has me needing to leave here soon to deal with some urgent physiological issues, but I will say that Ms. Kim and her friend and colleague Dorianne Laux have written a book for aspiring poets (The Poet's Companion, please use your preferred book providerer, if yer curious) that is chock-full of exercises. We could post one of those, don't you know.

I'd be h-h-happy to. And we could. . .

Oh hey, sorry, gotta go. My Muse is, um, calling.

Insistently.




Oh, Kim! Goddess of polysyllabic need!
On whose line breaks and whose body I do swoon!
Please, dear poet, take me to your biker moon,
There to synechdoche me 'til I bleed!

 

[normal jean]

.................

 

[normal jean]

These are all such wonderful reactions to the exercise. (Champ, I think that may be one of the best poems I've ever read of yours!) I'm so glad we're trying it. Bij, your coincidence is too funny, and I'm looking forward to reading the poem.

Liar, I'm with you on Ezra: I've never really gotten my mind around him either and I'm hoping doing this exercise will give me a better understanding. I have about nine different "letters" in my head and I'm trying to figure out which way to go.

The only thing about this exercise (overall, not just Ezra) that's bugging me a little is that Emily Dickinson is the only female poet discussed in the book and Amiri Bakara (Leroi Jones), the only African American poet. It's starting to feel a little too "dead white men" to me. Anyone else picking up on that? I'm starting to think it would be good to try to add a little more bewbage and color (not to mention life!) to the selection. Anyone got any ideas on this? Maybe add someone like Kim Addonizio or Sandra Cisneros? Gwendolyn Brooks or Yousef Komunyakaa? Anyone feel qualified enough to recommend an exercise on any of these (or other) folks to make the selection more diverse? I know, for example, that RainMan and Tzara are both big fans of Kim Addonizio. Or I can try. Thoughts?

how about Anna Swir?

There's a great reason why Jenn chose her nick ya know

http://www.poemhunter.com/anna-swirszczynska/

 

[Angeline]

how about Anna Swir?

There's a great reason why Jenn chose her nick ya know

http://www.poemhunter.com/anna-swirszczynska/

I never realized that's where Jenn got her nick, though of course it makes perfect sense. Maybe I knew it once and forgot.

It's a great suggestion although I really am not so familiar with Anna Swirszczynska's poetry. Maybe Ms. Anna-Banana (who I know is busy with her baby-baby and her journal-baby) could suggest an exercise? I don't have a great deal of faith in my ability to summarize the techniques/approaches of poets I hardly know.

 

[normal jean]

..............

 

[Angeline]

I had a pink party dress, girly
frilled, belled above my scabby knees.
Mama put a bow in my hair, combed me
to a satin lie. I put my bike away and left
my roller skates by the cellar door. May
28th, was it Memorial Day? You had hips

before me and big girls get to walk
in the sunshine, in the parade. You
were a white pleated skirt, you were curls
and lipstick. I sat on the curb, ducked
into the shade, stiffer than my clothes

with envy. You get everything first:
Pearls, boys' kisses, the car, the trip
to California and months roll by
punctuated with your letters, perfect
penmanship, always better than mine.

The last time I saw you. September?
Was it after your birthday? We fall
before a winter lasts 30 years and more.
You had another new dress, apple green
velvet and one purple star on the chest.
I think it will never go with Mama's pearls,

and I don't even want them, I want you
not to be always ahead of me. Why
am I consumed with jealousy simply
not being first? I will have years to be first:
first married, first to bear children, first
alone and now I forget your face,

your eyes are fractured from your lips,
your arms and smile all memories.
The pearls are mine, everything is mine.
I am first now always and the last
time I went to the cemetary,
I couldn't find your grave.

 

[champagne1982]

Ang, it's not nice to make me cry.

 

[Angeline]

Ang, it's not nice to make me cry.

Sorry, love. Have a tissue. I keep em on hand for my poems.

 

[Tzara]

Audio-Visual
To Arlene L: Too Years, Too Late

Dear A. seems wrong, so I will say
merely Hello. I loved you once.
I was fourteen, and so were you.

I was the filmstrip guy, so like
the 60s version of Power Point geek.
It got me out of class, hey? Why.

I don't know whether it was
your mustard-yellow shift, too short
for those who did not love your knees

like I did, or what it was.
The blonde bobbed hair? Probably that
you sat next to me and were female

just at the right just time.
So even, or especially, well,
those black plastic glasses that you wore,

that seem so squarish, secretarial now,
what? Forty years later? Are become some
special fetish, babe. Now would I order

you as room service with them
and I would never leave your tray
out in the hall. Never. Never.

So, although I doubt you've kept
my signet ring, the one
I gave you on that silver chain

I paid ten dollars for
in 19-fucking-68 pre-inflation dollars,
it doesn't matter. You were Juliet

or Rosalind and I was Romeo
and wandering, until we finished that.
And then you were Estella then,

and I was Pip. Or, rather, wished
I was Brian Hyland and I'd sealed you
with some unremembered kiss.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Exercise

Letter...
​

Enjoy,

Senna Jawa​

PS. When Angeline obsessively writes anti-Semetic, half of the time she means antiseptic, and the other half: anti-semantic. E.g. In his anti-semantic statements, Ezra Pound is not exactly antiseptic.

 

[tungtied2u]

To memories

Once upon a time
you jumped out from the closet
what a start I had
to see you so suddenly
dressed like a ghost
from some Dickens tale

then there was the chicken dance
where you flapped and strutted
to some kids song about a whale
head bobbing, in your birthday suit
wearing your downy red hair
like a comb, barely 18'' tall

I remember the warmth
the glow growing within
when all I saw and heard
made me swell with pride
as tears clouded vision
and my lips quivered

and always the leaving
the way it ends
sitting in a cold dark corner
just a scream away
from silence and solitude
with these feelings best buried

 

[normal jean]

......................