StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Comparing Emily Dickinson and Ezra Pound Poem - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
The author of this paper will discuss how three Dickinson poems relate to Pound’s “River Merchant’s Wife.” The discussion also seeks to answer the question: Which of the three informs the Pound poem to the greatest extent, i.e., comes closest to those emotions that prompted the poem in the first place?…
Download free paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER96.6% of users find it useful
Comparing Emily Dickinson and Ezra Pound Poem
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Comparing Emily Dickinson and Ezra Pound Poem"

?Discuss how three Dickinson poems (If you were coming in the Fall; She rose to His Requirement; and Tell all the Truth) relate to Pound’s “River Merchant’s Wife.” Which of the three informs the Pound poem to the greatest extent, i.e., comes closest to those emotions that prompted the poem in the first place? Two of the three poems of Dickinson, “If you were coming in the Fall,” and “She rose to His Requirement,” are closely related to the poem, “River Merchant’s Wife,” by Pound, while the third poem, “Tell all the Truth,” takes readers to a distinct philosophical realm. Dickinson’s poem, “She rose to His requirement,” relates to “The River Merchant’s Wife – A Letter,” in many ways. She also, like the river merchant’s wife, leaves behind all her pleasures just to match her husband needs, as she wants to engross herself in the new roles of wife and mother. “The Playthings of Her Life/ Of Women, and Of Wife,” (Dickinson 2-4). Like the river merchant’s wife who has became totally submissive in behavior not to annoy her husband and had completely forgotten the childhood joys: “Lowering my head/I never looked back” (Pound 9-10). She is willing to forego any comfort to please her husband. Dickinson uses the metaphor of gold comparing it with marriage, as marriage after a certain stage loses its charm like the gold loses its shine over recurrent use. She also dedicates her life to her husband, all her characteristic values, her emotions, “But only to Himself – be known,” (Dickinson 11). In the case of river merchant’s wife, dedication is not one-sided, as husband is also wholly and equally dedicated. The reason of this can be ascribed to their childhood love, as no such connection is visible in Dickinson’s leading lady’s before-marriage relationship with her husband. Level of commitment in river merchant and his wife increased further with age for each other; she wanted to be only his: “Forever and forever and forever” (Pound 13). I do not get although the same feeling of reciprocity in the lady of She rose to his Requirement but she is ever-prepared to “lay unmentioned,” (Dickinson 9). The first stanza of the river merchant’s wife takes the readers to the childhood memories of the wife, as she speaks through the letter to her husband, the river merchant. She and her husband used to play like all children of their age in the village of Chokan. Her hair used to be cut and fall over her forehead while playing near the front yard, plucking flowers while her husband used to play horse. She is recalling the cherished memories of childhood spent together when there was no place for hatred or doubt in their calm lives: “…without dislike or suspicion” (Pound 6). So relatively Wife has more to share about the childhood time, which is not visible in both the poems of Dickinson, If you were coming and She rose. Wife describes the after-marriage life when five months have passed since the husband had gone on a business trip through Ku-to-yen River and not come back. The wife gets forlorn when she sees a pair of butterflies: “The paired butterflies/hurt me” (Pound 23-25). She feels growing in age but has not lost hope. She is willing to come to greet him by coming to Cho-fu-sa, if she gets some information of his arrival. I find the Wife’s eagerness to meet her husband surpasses that of the woman of She rose to. But it matches and even lags behind in extremeness of the woman in If you were coming. If you were coming in the Fall follows a somewhat similar line of her endless waiting for him. She is willing to wait for him during the summer in the hope that he will come in the fall. Even years and centuries do not matter if there is a hope that he will come. Beyond that she is even ready to be in eternal bliss with him after death but uncertainty of his coming back to her is so painful that she feels like she will be bitten any time like a goblin bee. But, now, uncertain of the length Of this that is between, It goads me, like the Goblin bee – That will not state – it’s sting. Like Wife, she is also a faithful woman who can wait for his man at any length of time of the physical being and even ready to wait for him in the world after death. In a way, her patience level is unlimited. Comparing her with Wife whose husband has been away for five months only, anyways, the waiting experience of the woman in If you were coming although is a sort of exaggeration, yet more convincing when she herself is not sure the length of time she has to wait till she meets him. The possibility remains of getting stung suddenly because the news of his not coming will be like the sudden pricking of a bee. In my view, the mental state of two women of Dickinson matches and relates to the Wife but yet there is a relative difference. The woman of She rose to his Requirement is the call of a woman ethically bound to fulfill her duties of wife and mother, while If you were coming in the Fall dwells more on waiting to be one with her lover or husband. There is no clue of the exact relationship, but the difference is of perspective. One woman of Dickinson can go to any extent in sacrificing her pleasures to fulfill her new obligations of married life, while the other woman in the second poem is just going and willing to spend her whole life in his waiting. Relating both these poems of Emily Dickinson with Ezra Pound’s The River Merchant’s Wife, I feel that Dickinson’s She rose to his Requirement is similar in memories of the time before marriage to Pound’s The River-Merchant’s Wife. Both women speak very fondly of their childhood memories. The missing element in She rose to his Requirement is the painful experience of a beloved in the waiting for her lover. The “paired butterflies” sting the wife that she is alone but the woman of If you were coming in the Fall is living in incessant fear of getting stung when it would be revealed that no more wait is required, as he is not coming. The third poem of Dickinson, Tell all the Truth takes the readers to a different philosophical realm. It does not relate in content and feeling in any way with The River-Merchant’s Wife. Tell all the Truth deals with speaking truth in the slanting way. It means truth should be stated not directly to one’s face, as success lies in circling: “Success in circuit lies/Too bright for our infirm Delight” (Dickinson 33-34). As our joys are not firm, truth should be revealed as lightening to children, who can be explained the reasons behind; how and why it occurred. Similarly, truth must shine slowly so that one is prepared to face it. Thus, at least two poems of Dickinson are closely related to The River-Merchant’s Wife by Pound, namely She rose to his Requirement, and If you were coming in the Fall, sharing the pangs of separation. Works Cited Dickinson, Emily. “Emily Dickinson Spring Supplement.” The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Ralph W. Franklin. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 1988. Pound, Ezra. “The River-merchant’s Wife: A Letter.” Cathay. 1915. Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“American literature - Emily Dickinson and Ezra Pound poem comparison Essay”, n.d.)
Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/literature/1472786-american-literature-emily-dickinson-and-ezra-pound
(American Literature - Emily Dickinson and Ezra Pound Poem Comparison Essay)
https://studentshare.org/literature/1472786-american-literature-emily-dickinson-and-ezra-pound.
“American Literature - Emily Dickinson and Ezra Pound Poem Comparison Essay”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/literature/1472786-american-literature-emily-dickinson-and-ezra-pound.
  • Cited: 1 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Comparing Emily Dickinson and Ezra Pound Poem

EMILY DICKINSON

Dickinson was born to Edward dickinson and Emily Norcross, and she had an older brother and a younger sister.... The regular involvement in Dickinson's life made him a favorite to his children; indeed, it had been noted that dickinson and her siblings were not very fond of her mother, who was a cold woman.... emily dickinson The Author's Life Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, a famed American poet, was born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts....
4 Pages (1000 words) Research Paper

John Ashbery as an Avant-Garde Poet of the Post-Modern Period

hellip; In fact towards the end of the 70s the wheel of American poetry almost stopped turning owing to the almost decline or decay of other renowned poets like ezra pound who died in 1972, death of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton and the waning away of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell paved the way for the success of Ashbery especially at a time when he was on the rise with his Pulitzer award and the associated honors in 1976....
28 Pages (7000 words) Essay

Background of Emily Dickinson

One of the writers who intrigued her with dark themes and triggered her imagination was Nathaniel Hawthorne (A Study of emily dickinson, 1047).... (A Study of emily dickinson, pg.... emily dickinson (1830 – 1886) was one of the well renowned poets of America but who did not receive recognition until the 20th century.... During the later part of her life emily dickinson withdrew from public life and led a more cloistered one with just her family, her brother's family, her garden and very few close friends mainly due to her failing health....
6 Pages (1500 words) Essay

Analysis of Because I Could Not Stop for Death and I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died Poems by Dickinson

Reading emily dickinson is an exhilarating journey full of surprises.... This poem is "a dramatic representation of the passage from this world of the living to the afterlife.... Further, the suitor is deceptively gentle and easy-going as the phrases "He knew no haste" and "for his civility" from the poem suggest.... Thus the poem creates a sense of progression in time along with motion in space as the chariot moves.... In these terms, then, Dickinson is being terribly ironic throughout the poem" (Ferlazzo, p....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Emily Dickinson's In A Library

(in Buckingham 281-282) In the early 20th century, Dickinsons niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, published a series of further collections, including many previously unpublished poems, with similarly normalized punctuation and capitalization; The Single Hound emerged in 1914, The Life and Letters of emily dickinson and The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1924, Further Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1929.... Considered one of the definitive American poets, emily dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was a reclusive personality and a largely unpublished poet during her lifetime....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay

Alexander Pope and The Augustan Age

The Augustan age is generally regarded a prolific era in the history of literature.... The essay "Alexander Pope and The Augustan Age" examines if it possible to reconcile Pope's optimistic principle that 'Whatever is, is right' with the pessimism apparent in the works of several Augustan writers....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay

Emily Dickinson's poetry

Thus,… This inevitably makes their poetic works artificial, making it difficult for the reader to delve deep into the poem and decipher the author's emily dickinson's Poetry Poetry is, to my thinking, absolutely special, standing above all other literary forms and holding its own niche.... Poetry of emily dickinson, one of the most illustrious American poets, is marked by the unaffected and sensible way of communicating of thoughts and ideas.... To support my point of view, I would like to provide the verse that captured my imagination the most among the poems of emily dickinson....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay

German Musicians' Creative Way And History Of Success

Robert Schumann is a famous German musician.... The paper "German Musicians' Creative Way And History Of Success" provides brief information about Robert Schumann.... It contains basic information including birth rate, death and his career as a composer and performer.... hellip; The longings of his heart found expression in his love-poems....
9 Pages (2250 words) Essay
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us