Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Pound and Frost

I did some minor research about any influence or acquaintance between Ezra Pound and Robert Frost because their work was circulating through the Modernist movement around the same time and I was curious to see how Pound would react to Frost and visa versa.
It turns out that Pound came a few years before Frost and was one of Frost's main influences, but I couldn't find any comment by Pound about Frost's work. The reason I was so interested is because of Pound's manifesto from last week. It lays down some pretty rigid and clear rules regarding Imagist poetry, and the more I read Frost for this week, the more I saw Frost breaking those rules.
Frost's poetry is wordy, circular, and vague. That's not to say he isn't an inspiring or meditative poet, his work just strikes me as more Neo-Elizabethan than Imagist--which is quite the deviation. When I read Frost's work I imagine a dog on a leash: Frost starts very grounded and anchored in the message of the poem but begins to trail off in metaphor and vagury until the leash jerks him back to the center of the poem. He has a tendency to do this several times in a poem which makes them quite lengthy, something on which I'm sure Pound would comment. I could really see Pound burning through a few red pens if he were given free reign on Frost's poetry.

2 comments:

  1. Ok, Dan, I'm going to bring some stuff into class about their relationship...

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  2. You're right that Pound was first. Personae came out in 1909. Frost's first book, A Boy's Will, came out in 1913, but I don't think Pound was much of an influence.

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