A Pact, by Ezra Pound
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.
***
Pound's poem would make an interesting amendment to Bloom's anxiety-of-influence system, or at the very least an interesting response. Studying the point at which the young poet's relationship to her forerunners turns from the purely agonistic to something more appreciative, at the very least, if not amicable. At what point is a poet able to say "I am old enough now to make friends"? What changes are then effected in that poet's work? Does this cease the work of "misreading," or is it only carried on under new terms? These are questions that require concrete application to be useful, but it seems to me that they might be fruitful questions to ask.
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.
***
Pound's poem would make an interesting amendment to Bloom's anxiety-of-influence system, or at the very least an interesting response. Studying the point at which the young poet's relationship to her forerunners turns from the purely agonistic to something more appreciative, at the very least, if not amicable. At what point is a poet able to say "I am old enough now to make friends"? What changes are then effected in that poet's work? Does this cease the work of "misreading," or is it only carried on under new terms? These are questions that require concrete application to be useful, but it seems to me that they might be fruitful questions to ask.
Comments
anyway... I have an english poem and I need to know the historical relevance of this poem.