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Ezra Pound
“The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
 “In a Station of the Metro”
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
 Born in Hailey, Idaho / grew up in Pennsylvania
 Taught at a conservative religious college for a while
 Afterwards, Pound went to Europe in 1908
 Became a self-appointed spokesperson for the new poetic
movement, called Imagism
 T.S. Eliot dedicated his collection of poems, The Waste Land
(1922) to Pound
 Moved to Paris in 1921, and to Italy three years later
 Continued to write poetry
 His interest in economics and social theory led him to support
Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy
Ezra Pound
 During WWII, he stayed in Italy
 Became a propagandist for Mussolini’s policies
 Criticized the struggle of the U.S. and its allies over a radio
broadcast
 Pound was taken prisoner in 1945 by the U.S. Army and
confined
 Taken back to the U.S. and charged with treason
 Spent many years in a psychiatric hospital
 Deemed criminally insane
 Released due to complaints that his literary contributions
outweighed his disastrous lack of judgment – Robert Frost = a
supporter of this
 Returned to Italy, which is where he spent the rest of
his life
“The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”
 Answer the following (pg. 576-577)
1. What events is Pound describing in each of the following: stanza 1, 2,
3, and 4?
2. What emotions and character traits do the images in lines 1-6
suggest?
3. What do lines 7-10 suggest about the circumstances of the speaker’s
marriage and the way she felt about it for the first year? Cite details to
support your answer.
4. At what point in the poem is there a turning point? How so?
5. Paraphrase line 14.
6. Why do you think Pound includes the images “swirling eddies” and
“sorrowful noise” in the fourth stanza?
7. What image suggests that the river-merchant was reluctant to leave
home?
8. Explain the meaning of line 25.
9. What do the images in the final stanza reveal about the speaker’s
feelings?
10. Why might the river-merchant have left?