I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman -
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
It was you that broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root -
Let there be commerce between us.
I wonder who will be the next GREAT poet in English to make a 'pact' with Pound...
Now is a time for carving. Good delivery. Well done! Sylva.
To understand this short poem, it is first necessary to explore Pound's negative feelings towards Walt Whitman. In 1909, Pound wrote an essay titled " What I Feel About Walt Whitman, " in which he denounced the older poet's " crudity" and " barbaric yawp."
Masterful poem has been worked and re-worked to seem spontaneous. Beautifully shaped lines advance a generous argument, stroke by stroke.
@ Stanton Hager - I think no one, as poetry is all but dead in this new age of confusion. The crap that those post-modernists can not be called poetry by sane people.
Pound's not so weighty anymore