' A Defaut De Bien Sur Dieu Amerique Je' (Translation) . Poem by Michael Walker

To me the paratactic style is compelling for a simplistic attractive immediacy, such as Julius Caesar's famous laconic phrase, Veni, vidi, vici or, I came, I saw, I conquered. I would argue that writers like Charles Dickins and Hemingway especially definitely used the paratactic style, to give phrases in their sentences equal weight to creative a distinctive literary style and effect, in achieving a procision of tone and emotive effect within parts of their narrative style. Ezra Pound, when adapting Chinese and Japanese poetry into his then experimental style, used the paratactic style with startling effect with the stark juxtaposition of images in poems like 'In A Station of the Metro', where he used an unexpected likeness to convey rare emotion; therefore his two images or fragments, which at first appear starkly dissimilar images or fragments, are juxtaposed without a clear connection to form a unity in contrast. I believe leaving readers of the poem, to make their own connections implied by the paratactic syntax, engages a reader to personalize and own the poem, in a way where pure descriptive techniques cannot attain the same power of introspection and reasoning into multiple layers of meaning. Of course contemporary readers of poetry who swiftly scan lines rushing through a poem, will miss the richness of emotive layered tone, poetic appreciation can sometimes be measured in time invested into reaping the seasoned maturity of dense simplistic lines, the precise moment transience of insight is attained, new ways of perceiving taken for granted familiar images in extended startling contexts.