Wednesday, June 18, 2008

This made me miss being an English major.

“Direct treatment of the ‘thing’ ” was the formula of the movement that Pound invented, in 1912: Imagism. In the Imagist model, the writer is a sculptor. Technique consists of chipping away everything superfluous in order to reveal the essential form within. “It took you ninety-seven words to do it,” Pound is reported to have remarked to a young literary aspirant who had handed him a new poem. “I find it could have been managed in fifty-six.” He claimed that his best-known short poem, “In a Station of the Metro,” took a year and a half to write, and that he had cut it down from thirty lines:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

The form “made new” here is, of course, the haiku: two images juxtaposed to evoke a sensation—in this case, according to Pound, the sensation of beauty. It’s important to recognize, though, that the subject of the poem is not “these faces”; the subject is “the apparition.” (Otherwise, the first three words would be superfluous, subject to the Imagist razor.) The faces are not what matters. What matters is the impression they make in the mind of a poet. That is where the work of association takes place. This is what poets do: they connect an everyday x with an unexpected y.

(from The New Yorker, June 9. Also, further proof that you should always read all of The New Yorker, even if you think an article will bore you, as I thought with Pound because, come on, Pound.)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Apparition, with its dual meaning: something ghostlike, illusory, and something making a sudden appearance, like petals falling. It makes me miss being an English major, too.

D said...

shows you the differnce atween, your mom and me. She comments on the smart stuff and me on the stupid stuff. like those photos on your shared items thing-a-ma-jig starring steve guttenberg. Excellent.
or that guy I have never seen before with the really dorky shoes/shirt/and miniskirt-shorts outfit, whats up with that?
see I told you, I comment on the stupid stuff

Unknown said...

So I don't even know what "d" is talking about in several senses. And I kinda want to delete my comment because now it just seems like I stated the super-obvious.