A different river

For the second time this semester, I read something interesting in the news.  Here, see for yourself.

Which got me thinking about Ezra Pound, so I’m reading again the following poem Jim discussed at the Workshop this summer.  This is a fine complement to the news article, which mentions Pound’s Chinese studies multiple times, but does not include an example.

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

By Ezra Pound

After Li Po

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about 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 Chōkan:

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 look out?

At sixteen you departed

You went into far Ku-tō-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 Chō-fū-Sa.

            First, about the power of a title:  Had the title not called it a letter, would you have read this as a letter or as soliloquy?

It’s a Pound poem, it’s almost a whole page long, and my posts don’t have to be long, so I’m not going to try to talk about every image.  In fact, I’ll start by pointing out which parts of the first stanza that are not images:  went on living; without dislike or suspicion; bashful.  Of course, the bashful is backed up by the two images in the next two lines, and, because it, by virtue of its position towards the end of the stanza, draws and holds attention, it sets the tone for the poem, encouraging you to read every statement as an understatement, magnifying the images in your mind. 

It’s also quite impossible to catalog all of the internal rhyme, but let me at least point out the end-rhyme pattern of the first stanza:  Unrhymed lines (1, 4, 7, 10) alternate with off-rhymed couplets (flowers/horse in lines 2 and 3, Chōkan/suspicion in lines 5 and 6, bashful/wall in lines 8 and 9).

I’ll just skim the rest of the poem:  Admire the power of the interrogative Why should I climb the look out? at the end of the second stanza; two compelling images the river of swirling eddies and The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead in the next stanza, as well as that stanza’s non-linear theme-rheme progression, with you as the running theme of the first three lines, setting up the thematic shift to The monkeys in the fourth line; and, in the closing stanza, the way Pound breathes life into the cliché You dragged your feet by means of the moss (different mosses!) growing at the spot where the feet were dragged, the powerful yellow with August, and the non-falsifiable ending 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 Chō-fū-Sa.

I didn’t find a recording of this in the poet’s voice, but there’s much by Poundat PennSound, after listening to which you could try to imagine him reading this.