poemas de POESÍA MODERNISTA ANGLONORTEAMERICANA, Apuntes de Poesía

¡Descarga poemas de POESÍA MODERNISTA ANGLONORTEAMERICANA y más Apuntes en PDF de Poesía solo en Docsity! PREFACE TO LYRICAL BALLADS WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1800)  The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature. The language, too, of these men has been adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation.  NEGATIVE CAPABILITY JOHN KEATS (1817) …several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason – Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. THE POET At morn, at noon, at eve, and middle night, He passes forth into the charmed air, With talisman to call up spirits rare From plant cave, rock, and fountain. To his sight The husk of natural objects opens quite To the core, and every secret essence there Reveals the elements of good and fair, Making him see, where Learning hath no light. Sometimes above the gross and palpable things Of this diurnal sphere, his spirit flies On awful wing; and with its destined skies Holds premature and mystic communings, Till such unearthly intercourses shed A visible halo round his mortal head. John Keats (1814-1819) READ ME A LESSON MUSE AND SPEAK IT LOUD Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist! I look into the chasms, and a shroud Vaporous doth hide them, — just so much I wist Mankind do know of hell; I look o'erhead, And there is sullen mist, — even so much Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread Before the earth, beneath me, — even such, Even so vague is man's sight of himself! Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet, — Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf, I tread on them, — that all my eye doth meet Is mist and crag, not only on this height, But in the world of thought and mental might! John Keats (1814-1819) THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine-and-fifty swans. The nineteenth autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count; I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount And scatter wheeling in great broken rings Upon their clamorous wings. I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore. All's changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread. Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still. But now they drift on the still water, Mysterious, beautiful; Among what rushes will they build, By what lake's edge or pool Delight men's eyes when I awake some day To find they have flown away? William Butler Yeats (1917) ADAM’S CURSE We sat together at one summer’s end, That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,    And you and I, and talked of poetry. I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,    Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.    Better go down upon your marrow-bones    And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones    Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;    For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet    Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen    The martyrs call the world.’                                           And thereupon That beautiful mild woman for whose sake    There’s many a one shall find out all heartache    On finding that her voice is sweet and low    Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know— Although they do not talk of it at school— That we must labour to be beautiful.’ I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing    Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring. There have been lovers who thought love should be    So much compounded of high courtesy    That they would sigh and quote with learned looks    Precedents out of beautiful old books;    Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’ We sat grown quiet at the name of love;    We saw the last embers of daylight die,    And in the trembling blue-green of the sky    A moon, worn as if it had been a shell    Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell    About the stars and broke in days and years. I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:    That you were beautiful, and that I strove    To love you in the old high way of love; That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown    As weary-hearted as that hollow moon. William Butler Yeats (1904) THE SECOND COMING Turning and turning in the widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst    Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.    The darkness drops again; but now I know    That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? William Butler Yeats (1921) IMAGISM A FEW DON’TS BY AN IMAGISTE An “Image” is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. I use the term “complex” rather in the technical sense employed by the newer psychologists, such as Hart, though we may not agree absolutely in our application. It is the presentation of such a “complex” instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art. It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works. … LANGUAGE Use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something. Don’t use such an expression as “dim lands of peace.” It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstractions. Do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don’t think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition into line lengths. (It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.) … Use either no ornament or good ornament. RHYTHM AND RHYME … It is not necessary that a poem should rely on its music, but if it does rely on its music that music must be such as will delight the expert. … Don’t be “viewy”—leave that to the writers of pretty little philosophic essays. Don’t be descriptive; remember that the painter can describe a landscape much better than you can, and that he has to know a deal more about it. … When Shakespeare talks of the “Dawn in russet mantle clad” he presents something which the painter does not present. There is in this line of his nothing that one can call description; he presents. Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap. … Don’t chop your stuff into separate iambs. Don’t make each line stop dead at the end and then begin every next line with a heave. … A rhyme must have in it some slight element of surprise if it is to give pleasure, it need not be bizarre or curious, but it must be well used if used at all. … That part of your poetry which strikes upon the imaginative eye of the reader will lose nothing by translation into a foreign tongue; that which appeals to the ear can reach only those who take it in the original. Ezra Pound (1913)  They wanted to demolish what they had and create something new. IMAGIST POEMS IMAGE -> C. Because the adjectives are not accurate. the adjective “strange” is very vague. “Loneliness and drought” seem to be symbolist. The title of this poem is “image”, so as it should be an example of an image. Forsaken lovers, Burning to a chaste white moon, Upon strange pyres of loneliness and drought. Edward Storer BEAUTIFUL DESPAIR -> D. Beautiful elaboration but too elaborated, this is narrative. This is not exactly what the imagists proposed. I look at the moon, And the frail silver of the climbing stars; I look, dear, at you, And I cast my verses away. Edward Storer AUTUMN -> C. Too much descriptive (also a narrative). It introduced actions, also the pronoun “I”. A touch of cold in the Autumn night—  I walked abroad,  And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge   Like a red-faced farmer I did not stop to speak, but nodded,  And round about were the wistful stars  With white faces like town children. T. H. Hulme ABOVE THE DOCK -> B. Complex moment in an instant of time Above the quiet dock in midnight, Tangled in the tall mast's corded height, Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after play.  “What seemed so far away Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after play”: it is necessary? T. E. Hulme THE POOL -> B. she presents the moment of uncertainty about what she sees. “I”. Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea-fish. I cover you with my net. What are you—banded one? H. D. IN A STATION OF THE METRO -> A. Very short, intense image, you visualize immediately. The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. Ezra Pound THE ENCOUNTER -> D. it’s like a short novel, too descriptive. All the while they were talking the new morality Her eyes explored me. -> all these three lines are descriptions of actions. And when I arose to go Her fingers were like the tissue Of a Japanese paper napkin. This should be the image. Ezra Pound AU VIEUX JARDIN C -> He is using “I”, so, he is very subjective. He is also describing actions; it is very discursive. It is connected with the idea of decadence, it is kind of symbolist. I have sat here happy in the gardens,  Watching the still pool and the reeds  And the dark clouds  Which the wind of the upper air  Tore like the green leafy boughs  Of the divers-hued trees of late summer;  But though I greatly delight  In these and the water-lilies,  That which sets me nighest to weeping  Is the rose and white color of the smooth flag-stones,  And the pale yellow grasses  T. S. ELIOT (1919) 1 Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, "tradition" should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity. No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities. 2 Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. If we attend to the confused cries of the newspaper critics and the susurrus of popular repetition that follows, we shall hear the names of poets in great numbers; if we seek not Blue-book knowledge but the enjoyment of poetry, and ask for a poem, we shall seldom find it. In the last article I tried to point out the importance of the relation of the poem to other poems by other authors, and suggested the conception of poetry as a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written. The other aspect of this Impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the poem to its author. And I hinted, by an analogy, that the mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of "personality," not being necessarily more interesting, or having "more to say," but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations. The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gases previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material. … The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a "personality" to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality. 3 REFLECTIONS ON VERSE LIBRE (1917) Vers libre has not even the excuse of a polemic; it is a battle-cry of freedom, and there is no freedom in art. And as the so-called vers libre, which is good is anything but 'free', it can better be defended under some other label. Particular types of vers libre may be supported on the choice of content, or on the method of handling the content. I am aware that many writers of vers libre have introduced such innovations, and that the novelty of their choice and manipulation of material is confused--if not in their own minds, in the minds of many of their readers--with the novelty of the form. But I am not here concerned with imagism, which is a theory about the use of material; I am only concerned with the theory of the verse-form in which imagism is cast. If vers libre is a genuine verse-form it will have a positive definition. And I can define it only in negatives: (1) absence of pattern, (2) absence of rhyme, (3) absence of metre. …  'Blank verse' is the only accepted rhymeless verse in English--the inevitable iambic pentameter. The English ear is (or was) more sensitive to the music of the verse and less dependent upon the recurrence of identical sounds in this metre than in any other. There is no campaign against rhyme. But it is possible that excessive devotion to rhyme has thickened the modern ear. The rejection of rhyme is not a leap at facility; on the contrary, it imposes a much severer strain upon the language. When the comforting echo of rhyme is removed, success or failure in the choice of words, in the sentence structure, in the order, is at once more apparent. Rhyme removed, the poet is at once held up to the standards of prose. Rhyme removed, much ethereal music leaps up from the word, music which has hitherto chirped unnoticed in the expanse of prose. … And this liberation from rhyme might be as well a liberation of rhyme. Freed from its exacting task of supporting lame verse, it could be applied with greater effect where it is most needed. There are often passages in an unrhymed poem where rhyme is wanted for some special effect, for a sudden tightening-up, for a cumulative insistence, or for an abrupt change of mood.  DIFFICULT POETRY We can only say that it appears likely that poets in our civilisation, as it exists at present, must be difficult. Our civilisation comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results. The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate, if necessary, language into his meaning… The Metaphysical Poets (1921) DISSOCIATION OF SENSIBILITY A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility. When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man’s experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes. The Metaphysical Poets (1921) COMMUNICATION WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING What is surprising about the poetry of Dante is that it is, in one sense, extremely easy to read. It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. Dante (1929) THE OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately invoked. Hamlet (1919) And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair — (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin — (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.                So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?                And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.                And should I then presume?                And how should I begin? Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ... I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.  Se va a enfrentar a lo que le da miedo (llamar a la puerta de la mujer) y dice algo como “tierra trágame”. And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.  This is the moment he meets this woman.  The allusion: he compares himself with John the Baptist (“I have religious feeling” and then “I am not the correct feeling” but “I can be compared in a way with John the Baptist”.  Who is the prophet? John the Baptist. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.  This society is always represented by tea and this kind of things.  Allusion to his decadence “my greatness flicker”  The eternal Footman is identified with death.  “And in short, I was afraid”: all this beautiful poem means that he was just afraid but if he had said this thing in the very beginning, we would have no poem. This is another meta poetic element in the poem. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— If one, settling a pillow by her head                Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;                That is not it, at all.”  He imagines he makes the effort to go.  Rationalization: a false reasoning used to justify a behavior. Psychoanalytic approach here: paranoia, fear of women, neurotic character. Mental instability can be positive here because thanks of this we have the poem And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say:                “That is not it at all,                That is not what I meant, at all.”  Be aware of the change in the tense: *Using a conditional means that this did not happen, the image of John the Baptist meant that he was not able to do this, to be with this woman and to propose to this woman.  “If one” is the women  “That is not it at all, that is not what I meant, at all.” -> He is afraid of rejection, to be ridiculizado . No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.  Meta poetic element here also -> full of high sentences, grandiloquence so as to be unable to communicate.  Hamlet: I am not the protagonist; I am not the prophet. “Postponing” is why he is compared with Hamlet, since he postponed the action.  Hamlet is the protagonist, kind of hero, whereas this man is not the hero. I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.  Time has passed. Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.  Perhaps I have grown old. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea -> hemos permanecido en las habitaciones del mar By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown -> por sirenas envueltas con algas marrones y rojas Till human voices wake us, and we drown. -> y nos hundamos  He is scared of the women.  The women in the upper-class context, because of fear, he rejects them  However, he likes the women of the other context, but mermaids are dangerous, they destroy men, so, he is still scared of them. He is at the same time attract to this world and social context, is a kind of inspiration for the poet. And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, -> el grillo no tiene Alivio/grillo-> siempre aparece en los momentos de silencio. Although all his devastated, there is no peace. And the dry stone no sound of water. Only -> no sound of water, no hope There is shadow under this red rock, it is a metaphor for the church -> the shadow is the soul. Only there is shadow under the church. (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you -> at the morning your soul is separated from yourself (alienation). At night, you’re recognized with your soul. So, alienation is connected with little life. Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Dust is connected with death. God is trying to encourage humans to do something.                       Frisch weht der Wind                       Der Heimat zu                       Mein Irisch Kind,                       Wo weilest du? This is a quotation from Tristan (who is dying) “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; “They called me the hyacinth girl.” —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, little life Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Oed’ und leer das Meer.  God: which is his role? God tells man the “little life”, so cannot understand because you do not know (little life connected to knowledge).  This is connected to Hamlet and Ophelia and Tristan’s history (connected with Eliot’s historical sense since this is connected to the tradition): young couples loving each other; love cannot be consolidated because of “adults” which now are politics. He is talking about the war as something that has happened to human life in general (not only about the World War he has seen).   Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, *Sesostris was a Egiptian phaeron. Had a bad cold, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, cards associated with bad intentions Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, this card does not exist in the tarot cards, so she is una farsante (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, it does not exist neither The lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. The man hanged by his feet I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days. Metaphor of a society with lack of principles,  Difference between egipcian culture and Europe culture: the tarot cards were used for egipcians to predict. This instrument that was honest in that culture, now has became a different instrument.   Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, financial city I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson! “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! Mylae is a field of the guerras púnicas. “That corpse you planted last year in your garden, “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! “You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!” Reference to Boudelaire, “you must be involved in this”, “I’m addressing you”, “you are part of this”.  People who appeared in this part: the workers who are crossing the London bridge. How are they described? As death people. What they had to do was to achieve the holly graine and acquire knowledge.  Quotations of La Divina Comedia  Someone meets someone and called him: “you who where with me at the ships…”, references to the war.  Historical sense: past and present connected.  We can associate a word with hope -> plant (if you plant something is because you identified this concept with a semilla; the corpse can be la semilla of a new life.  God -> associated with “dog” (backwards is “god”). The Egyptian god Anubis, connected with the death. Story with this god -> he resurrected a man who were dismembered. He can resurrect the man. This is an allusion to gods in general, keep god far him. In the second stanza god was presented to remove the fear. However, this is only inspiration and encourage brought by God, but this is not something that is going to be solved by God but by humans.  All the poem can be connected with this little life and at the same time we find allusions to hope. T. S. Eliot (1922) II A GAME OF CHESS -> no lo vamos a ver The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, Glowed on the marble, where the glass Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines From which a golden Cupidon peeped out (Another hid his eyes behind his wing) Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra Reflecting light upon the table as The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, From satin cases poured in rich profusion; In vials of ivory and coloured glass Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air That freshened from the window, these ascended In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, Flung their smoke into the laquearia, Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she cried, and still the world pursues, “Jug Jug” to dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time Were told upon the walls; staring forms Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair Spread out in fiery points Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.   “My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. “Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.   “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? “I never know what you are thinking. Think.”   I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones.   “What is that noise?”                           The wind under the door. VORTEX. POUND.           The vortex is the point of maximum energy.          It represents, in mechanics, the greatest efficiency.          We use the words “greatest efficiency” in the precise sense—as they would be used in a text book of MECHANICS.          You may think of man as that toward which perception moves. You may think of him as the TOY of circumstance, as the plastic substance RECEIVING impressions.          OR you may think of him as DIRECTING a certain fluid force against circumstance, as CONCEIVING instead of merely observing and reflecting. -> here we find his break with imagism: he sees imagism as a movement that has a contemplative attitude in relation to the word (a passive attitude).   THE PRIMARY PIGMENT.          The vorticist relies on this alone; on the primary pigment of his art, nothing else.          Every conception, every emotion presents itself to the vivid consciousness in some primary form.          It is the picture that means a hundred poems, the music that means a hundred pictures, the most highly energized statement, the statement that has not yet SPENT itself it expression, but which is the most capable of expressing. -> no superfluous language, so, the simplest sentence but the most expressive one.   THE TURBINE.          All experience rushes into this vortex. All the energized past, all the past that is living and worthy to live. All MOMENTUM, which is the past bearing upon us, RACE, RACE-MEMORY, instinct charging the PLACID, NON-ENERGIZED FUTURE.          The DESIGN of the future in the grip of the human vortex. All the past that is vital, all the past that is capable of living into the future, is pregnant in the vortex, NOW.          Hedonism is the vacant place of a vortex, without force, deprived of past and of future, the vertex of a small spool or cone.          Futurism is the disgorging spray of a vortex with no drive behind it, DISPERSAL. THE RIVER MERCHANT’S WIFE: A LETTER While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead I played about the front gate, pulling flowers. You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums. And we went on living in the village of Chōkan: -> the story begins from the speaker’s childhood. Two small people, without dislike or suspicion. At fourteen I married My Lord you. I never laughed, being bashful. Lowering my head, I looked at the wall. Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back. At fifteen I stopped scowling, I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever, and forever. Why should I climb the look out? -> why I should look for another man? At sixteen you departed You went into far Ku-tō-en, by the river of swirling eddies, And you have been gone five months. The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead. You dragged your feet when you went out. By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses, Too deep to clear them away! The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older. If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang, Please let me know beforehand, And I will come out to meet you -> she is eager for her husband to return. As far as Chō-fū-Sa. Ezra Pound (1915) CANTO III I sat on the Dogana’s steps -> in Venice For the gondolas cost too much, that year, And there were not “those girls”, there was one face, this is a quotation from a writer/ Hilda Doolitle, lots of critics think this is a reference to her because it seems he was in love with her. And the Buccentoro twenty yards off, howling, “Stretti”, -> a place in Venice/ a song And the lit cross-beams, that year, in the Morosini, -> the palace And peacocks in Koré’s house, or there may have been. -> another palace               Gods float in the azure air, Bright gods and Tuscan, back before dew was shed. Light: and the first light, before ever dew was fallen. Panisks, and from the oak, dryas, And from the apple, mælid, Through all the wood, and the leaves are full of voices, -> he is mentioning nature deities. A-whisper, and the clouds bowe over the lake, And there are gods upon them, And in the water, the almond-white swimmers, The silvery water glazes the upturned nipple,                 As Poggio has remarked. -> he was an Italian humanist. Green veins in the turquoise, Or, the gray steps lead up under the cedars.   My Cid rode up to Burgos, Up to the studded gate between two towers, Beat with his lance butt, and the child came out, Una niña de nueve años, -> literal translation from the Cantar of Mio Cid To the little gallery over the gate, between the towers, Reading the writ, voce tinnula: That no man speak to, feed, help Ruy Diaz, On pain to have his heart out, set on a pike spike And both his eyes torn out, and all his goods sequestered, “And here, Myo Cid, are the seals, The big seal and the writing.” And he came down from Bivar, Myo Cid, With no hawks left there on their perches, And no clothes there in the presses, -> vino desde Bivar con todas sus posesiones. And left his trunk with Raquel and Vidas, That big box of sand, with the pawn-brokers, To get pay for his menie; Breaking his way to Valencia. -> Because he cannot enter into Burgos, he had to go into Valencia to continue his campaign. Ignez de Castro murdered, and a wall -> she was an aristocratic monarch of Galicia. He is considered to be appeared after death and this can be connected to Cid. Here stripped, here made to stand. Drear waste, the pigment flakes from the stone, CANTO XLV With Usura   With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well fitting that design might cover their face, with usura hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall harpes et luz or where virgin receiveth message and halo projects from incision, with usura seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines no picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper, with no mountain wheat, no strong flour with usura the line grows thick with usura is no clear demarcation and no man can find site for his dwelling. Stonecutter is kept from his tone weaver is kept from his loom WITH USURA wool comes not to market sheep bringeth no gain with usura Usura is a murrain, usura blunteth the needle in the maid’s hand and stoppeth the spinner’s cunning. Pietro Lombardo came not by usura Duccio came not by usura nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin’ not by usura nor was ‘La Calunnia’ painted. Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio Praedis, Came no church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit. Not by usura St. Trophime Not by usura Saint Hilaire, Usura rusteth the chisel It rusteth the craft and the craftsman It gnaweth the thread in the loom None learneth to weave gold in her pattern; Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered Emerald findeth no Memling Usura slayeth the child in the womb It stayeth the young man’s courting It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth between the young bride and her bridegroom CONTRA NATURAM They have brought whores for Eleusis Corpses are set to banquet at behest of usura. Ezra Pound WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS POETICS 1. “No ideas but in things”.  Take reality into account, you must not project your subjectivity. You must not contaminate with your subjectivity but observe the things.  This poet is under the influence of imagism.  Objectivism 2. Poetry is useful because it is useless. Poetry has an epistemological value similar to that of technology and science, but technology only exists for commercial purposes and science is liable to that use. Poetry has nothing to do with commerce and so its epistemological dimension is the purest of the three.  Create art from the shake of art. In poetry there is no commercial interest, technology is identified with the merchant interest and the science too. 3. The poem is a machine made out of words.  It is connected with the idea of efficiency; every word is meaningful. Machine is identified with the efficient, there is nothing redundant in a machine. 4. The modernist poet must be objectivist. The male sex tends to the universal; the female sex tends to the particular. The objectivist poet deals with the particular to express the universal.  Pay attention to themes that are unpoetic, the ordinary life. 5. “The man of imagination contends with the sky through layers of demoded words… meanings have been lost through laziness or changes in the form of existence which have let words empty”  *demoded words: words that have lost meaning.  Try to create forms that can transmit something that ordinary words cannot transmit. 6. The poet must resort to ordinary language in his/ her struggle against the alienation of language. The reader must have an easy access to the poem.  The opposite to Eliot, this is what connects this poet with Imagism. 7. “What I put down of value will have this value: an escape from crude symbolism, the annihilation of strained associations, complicated ritualistic forms designed to separate the work from ‘reality’ –such as rhyme, meter as meter and not as the essential of the work, one of its words”.  Symbolism is the enemy of this poet. 8. “now works of art … must be real, not realism, but reality itself”.  What realism tries is imitate reality. However, according to this author, the poem put something new in reality, and this is not an imitation of reality. 9. “… the imagination is wrongly understood when it is supposed to be a removal from reality. / Imagination is not to avoid reality… poetry does not tamper with the world but moves it – It affirms reality most powerfully and therefore, since PASTORAL When I was younger it was plain to me -> tenía claro que debía haver algo por mí mismo. I must make something of myself. Older now I walk back streets admiring the houses he admires what is ugly. of the very poor: non-entity roof out of line with sides the yards cluttered with old chicken wire, ashes, furniture gone wrong; the fences and outhouses built of barrel staves and parts of boxes, all, if I am fortunate, smeared a bluish green -> manchados de un verde azulado (hope?) that properly weathered -> que, bien curtido, es el que más me gusta pleases me best of all colors. -> es el que más me gusta de todos los colores No one will believe this Of vast import to the nation. W.C.W. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN WITH A BAD HEART Have I seen her? Only through the window across the street. If I go meeting her on the comer -> el primero some damned fool will go blabbing it -> va a contarlo to the old man and she’ll get hell. He’s a queer old bastard! -> referring to the old man Every time he sees me you’d think I wanted to kill him. But I figure it out it’s best to let things stay as they are— for a while at least. It’s hard giving up the thing you want most in the world, but with this damned pump of mine -> bomba liable to give out… -> susceptible de abandonar She’s a good kid and I’d hate to hurt her but if she can get over it— -> pero si puede superarlo sería mejor it’d be the best thing. W.C.W. YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW While she sits -> from this until “this little child” is the objective thing. there with tears on her cheek -> singular   her cheek on her hand -> singular too   this little child who robs her -> que la asalta/ this is the subjective thing (is the speaker’s projection of her feelings).   knows nothing of his theft -> atraco/ this is superfluous. This info. Is superfluous since a little child obviously knows nothing about his theft.   but rubs his -> se frota la nariz nose 6 stanzas. The display of the poem is different in relation with the second poem. Adverbial subordinate of time “while she…”, and then we have the main clause “this little child…”. The poem is about a woman, and in the main sentence we have the child. The woman, who is the main character, is in the subordinate clause. This poem contradicts William’s poetics because of the subjectivity part and the superfluous element. However, if we take into account both poems at the same time, the poems have a meta-poetic relevance. Maybe he wrote this poem as a draft and then he presented his poem in relation to his poetics, and he left both so as to express what is a modernist poem (2nd one) and which is the conventional one (1st one). YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW She sits with tears on her cheek her cheek on her hand the child YOUNG SYCAMORE I must tell you this young tree whose round and firm trunk between the wet pavement and the gutter (where water is trickling) rises bodily into the air with one undulant thrust half its height- and then dividing and waning sending out young branches on all sides- hung with cocoons it thins till nothing is left of it but two eccentric knotted twigs bending forward hornlike at the top W.C.W. THE RED WHEELBARROW -> la roja carretilla so much depends upon a red wheel -> wheelbarrow is separated here. Como si estuviera coja? barrow -> carretilla; EMPHASIS glazed with rain water -> EMPHASIS beside the white chickens -> EMPHASIS W.C.W  Particular here: the red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. There is a contrast between the white of the chickens and the red of the wheelbarrow.  Allusion to the universal: so much depends on this. What so much depends to this? This gives visibility to something. The thing is that: the object becomes visible and with the object other things are visible too. The object reveals itself and produces an effect: the image itself, there is a contract of colors, and make other objects visible too.  There is an allusion to the universal: “so much depends on this”. What so much depends on this? This object gives visibility to something. The thing is: the object becomes visible and with the object other things are visible too. Therefore, the object reveals itself and produces an effect: the image itself; there is a contrast of colors and make the other objects visible too.  Here there is no preconception, from the object comes the idea and thus the poem. THE GREAT FIGURE Among the rain  and lights  I saw the figure 5  in gold  on a red  firetruck  moving  tense  unheeded  to gong clangs  siren howls  and wheels rumbling  through the dark city.  W.C.W. WALLACE STEVENS POETICS 1. Symbolist influence: he is not given “to name the thing”, he prefers indirectness and difficult language like the symbolist poets. The meaning of the poem depends to a great extent on the reader’s effort to understand. 2. In most of his poems he discusses the relationship between fiction/poetry/imagination and reality/nature/earth. He doesn’t seem to believe in a conclusion for this issue. So this discussion is an endless process, in which contradictions are as possible as enriching. He vindicates fictions as the fundamental element of human existence and poetry is the supreme fiction. He has anthropocentric ideas: every human creation is superior to nature. 3. Many of his poems are meta-poetic poems precisely because of the recurrent discussion mentioned above. 4. He can be considered as a subjectivist poet, but he sees himself as objectivist because he accepts the existence of reality apart from the human perception of it –he is not an idealist- and sees reality as the “necessary angel”, that is, the indispensable source of inspiration for human creativity. Imagination can only create with the raw materials provided by that reality. 5. Poetry embellishes and/ or imposes order on nature/ reality. This is the mission of the poet. 6. He uses surrealist elements as a challenge to the reader’s intelligence, a hedonist celebration and a way of going beyond the limits of reality and nature. 7. He is Nietzschean because of his Dionysian vitalism, his hedonism, his vindication of fiction, his awareness of the “death of God”, and the eternal recurrence implicit in his continuous dealing with the same issue. ANECDOTE OF THE JAR I placed a jar in Tennessee,    And round it was, upon a hill.    It made the slovenly wilderness -> descuidado. Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. -> y se extiende/tumba The jar was round upon the ground    And tall and of a port in air. It took dominion everywhere.    The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or bush,    Like nothing else in Tennessee. Wallace Stevens A HIGH TONED OLD CHRISTIAN WOMAN Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.  Take the moral law and make a nave of it  And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,  The conscience is converted into palms,  Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.  We agree in principle. That's clear. But take  The opposing law and make a peristyle,  And from the peristyle project a masque  Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,  Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,  IDEAS OF ORDER AT KEY WEST She sang beyond the genius of the sea.    The water never formed to mind or voice,    Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion    Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,    That was not ours although we understood,    Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. The sea was not a mask. No more was she.    The song and water were not medleyed sound    Even if what she sang was what she heard,    Since what she sang was uttered word by word. It may be that in all her phrases stirred    The grinding water and the gasping wind;    But it was she and not the sea we heard. For she was the maker of the song she sang.    The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.    Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew    It was the spirit that we sought and knew    That we should ask this often as she sang. If it was only the dark voice of the sea    That rose, or even colored by many waves;    If it was only the outer voice of sky And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,    However clear, it would have been deep air,    The heaving speech of air, a summer sound    Repeated in a summer without end And sound alone. But it was more than that,    More even than her voice, and ours, among The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,    Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped    On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres    Of sky and sea.                            It was her voice that made    The sky acutest at its vanishing.    She measured to the hour its solitude.    She was the single artificer of the world In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,    Whatever self it had, became the self That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,    As we beheld her striding there alone, Knew that there never was a world for her    Except the one she sang and, singing, made. Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,    Why, when the singing ended and we turned    Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,    The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,    As the night descended, tilting in the air,    Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,    Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,    Arranging, deepening, enchanting night. Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,    The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,    Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,    And of ourselves and of our origins, In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds. Wallace Stevens