It is written in open verse in the form of a letter from the wife of a river-merchant to her husband, who has been away from their home for five months. The opening of the poem conveys both immediacy and continuance.
Despite being written in free verse, Pound makes use of several poetic techniques in ‘The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter’. These include but are not limited to, anaphora, caesura, and cliffhanger. The latter, cliffhanger, is clearly evident in the final lines of the poem.
This translation, “ The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter,” is structured into 5 stanzas: the first of 6 lines, and the second, third, and fourth of 4 lines each. Each of the first four stanzas is image-centered, focusing an emotional point in the history of the relationship between the river-merchant’s wife and her husband.
‘The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter’ is a loose translation of another poem by the Chinese poet Li Bai. It was first published in Pound’s Cathay, a 1915 collection of his works. Upon publication several of the poems in this collection were controversial.
The speaker in The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter is a young married girl who recalls her lonely younger days and her regrets of not spending enough time with him, now that her husband goes away. The poem is melancholy, beautiful, and pleading.
The poem honors constancy and faithfulness as the wife reflects on the development of their life together and expresses her growing sorrow as she anxiously awaits his return. One important theme in the poem reveals the process through which the love between the man and woman develops.
'The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter' by Ezra Pound describes the relationship between a sixteen-year-old girl and her merchant husband. The young wife is the speaker of the text, and she begins by informing the reader that she was married when she was only fourteen.
The West is where the sun sets, signaling the day's end (much like how the autumn is the signals the year's end). Just seeing those butterflies—and probably their reminders of isolation and decay—hurts the wife and makes her aware that she's aging.
1 Answers. The wife's loneliness, a result of separation, serves as the main conflict in Pound's, The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter.
Imagery is the descriptive language used in literature to recreate sensory experiences. One example of imagery from our poem is "While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead, I played about the front gate, pulling flowers." This is imagery, because it paints a picture in your head.
The river-merchant's wife expresses her longing for her absent husband by telling a neighbor.
But when she was sixteen, her husband had to go to work. While the husband travels and sells his goods, the wife tells him (through this letter) all the beautiful things he's missing and how she can't wait for him to get home.
In literature, conflict is a plot device used by writers when two opposing sides come up against each other. Conflict is one of the most crucial parts of any story, poem, or novel. Without it, the story would fall flat.
How do these details develop the idea that time and maturity can allow love to develop between two people? They suggest that the speaker is no longer the innocent girl or the bashful bride she once was, and she wants to be paired again with her beloved husband. You just studied 5 terms!
(Geography note: Ku-to-en is actually the name of a river, even though Pound pretends that it's a place or a region. Ku-to-en is also known as Kaing in Japanese and Ch'üt'ang in Chinese.)
The narrator then writes: “Why should I climb the lookout?” (Pound 213, 14). It is possible that the river-merchant is gone trading goods along rivers because that is his job and the time has come for him to leave his wife behind to make money.
‘ The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter’ by Ezra Pound is a five stanza poem that is separated into uneven sets of lines. The first stanza contains six lines, the second: four, the third: four, and the fifth has the most at eleven lines. As was the case with all of Pound’s poetry, as a leader of the Modernist movement, particular of the Imagism, there is no rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. This is a technique known as free verse.
Poetic Techniques. Despite being written in free verse, Pound makes use of several poetic techniques in ‘The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter’. These include but are not limited to, anaphora, caesura, and cliffhanger. The latter, cliffhanger, is clearly evident in the final lines of the poem. There is no resolution to the central conflict ...
This technique is often used to create emphasis.
This was a trip along the river during which he likely sought to buy and sell goods. The river he was traveling down is also known as Kaing in Japanese. At the point the letter was written he’d been gone for five months and she had no idea when he was coming back.
It was first published in Pound’s Cathay, a 1915 collection of his works. Upon publication several of the poems in this collection were controversial. Their form, style, and use of language were all-new, something that Pound strived for throughout his career. ‘The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter’ is generally considered to be ...
As was the case with all of Pound’s poetry, as a leader of the Modernist movement, particular of the Imagism, there is no rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. This is a technique known as free verse.
Pound was not the creator of this poem; he translated it from the original Chinese version by Li Po. The Chinese original likely had a specific form and identifiable meter, but Pound did not know enough about Chinese poetry to preserve it in his translation. Pound wrote his translation in free verse, structured around the chronological life events of the river-merchant and his wife. This form, though perhaps not Li Po's intent, does actually align with the content of this poem. The free verse makes the letter feel more authentic, as if it is a real letter from a wife to her husband. The lack of prescribed meter allows Pound to bring out the rawness of the wife's emotions, drawing readers directly into her loneliness without having to overcome the barrier of an overly structured presentation.
As she grows older, the changing seasons represent her emotional development over time. Rivers are also an important symbol in this poem. Rivers constantly flow and change, just as the relationship between the wife and her husband has evolved.
Poets often adjust form or meter in order to bring attention to a specific line. Even though this poem is free verse, those two lines are markedly different from the rest, which allows Pound to emphasize their content.
This poem takes the form of a letter from a lonely wife who has not seen her husband in five months. She begins by reminiscing about meeting him during childhood. She was pulling flowers at the front gate and he came by on stilts, playing horse. The next two lines, "And we went on living in the village of Chokan/Two small people, without dislike or suspicion," imply that the pair did not grow close right away following that encounter; they continued to grow up separately.
The setting of the poem shifts from spring to autumn. Spring usually represents abundance and new growth, and this is when the couple's love is in bloom.
Pound wrote his translation in free verse, structured around the chronological life events of the river-merchant and his wife. This form, though perhaps not Li Po's intent, does actually align with the content of this poem. The free verse makes the letter feel more authentic, as if it is a real letter from a wife to her husband.
Spring usually represents abundance and new growth, and this is when the couple's love is in bloom. Meanwhile, in the autumn, growth and greenery slowly wither away, leaves fall, and the air grows colder. The husband is away and his wife longs for his return. The wife notes that the moss has grown thicker as well, ...
Ezra Pound’s adaptation of a poem by Li Bo , an eighth century Chinese poet, is a dramatic monologue spoken by a sixteen-year-old girl. It is written in open verse in the form of a letter from the wife of a river-merchant to her husband, who has been away from their home for five months.
The first line begins with the word “while” and presents an image of the wife as a young girl. The second line starts with the word “I” and contains an image of the girl playing at the moment when she met her future husband. The effect that is created is a feeling of recollection which draws time’s passage across the consciousness of the present. The focus is shifted from the “I” to a memory of “you.” The first stanza concludes with the couple merging into “we”—“small people” who lived in a village in a state of unreflective innocence.
The last section of the poem, an extended stanza of ten lines, is located entirely in the immediate present.
The first stanza concludes with the couple merging into “we”—“small people” who lived in a village in a state of unreflective innocence. The second stanza begins a triad of quatrains that recapitulate the three years of their marriage.
The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter, published or translated from a Chinese poem by Ezra Pound.
C. They show the speaker's feelings and behavior at the start of her marriage, when she was young and less mature.