A Pact
A Pact
Original Text
Ezra Pound, "Contemporania," Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, 2.1 (April 1913): 6. See also Ezra Pound, Lustra (London: Elkin Mathews, 1916) 17. PS 3531 O82L8 1916 Robarts Library. Ezra Pound's Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals, prefaced and arranged by Lea Baechler, A. Walton Litz, and James Longenbach (New York and London: Garland, 1991), I (1902-1914): 137. PS 3531 O82A6 1991 Robarts Library.
2I have detested you long enough.
3I come to you as a grown child
4Who has had a pig-headed father;
5I am old enough now to make friends.
6It was you that broke the new wood,
7Now is a time for carving.
8We have one sap and one root --
9Let there be commerce between us.
Notes
1] Herbert Bergman, "Ezra Pound and Walt Whitman," American Literature 27 (1955-56): 56-61, transcribes an unpublished article by Pound, "What I Feel About Walt Whitman" (Feb. 1, 1909), which includes the following comments:
make truce with you: "make a pact with you" in 1916. Back to Line
He Is America. His crudity is an exceding great stench, but it is America .... He is disgusting. He is an excedingly nauseating pill, but he acomplishes his mission.
I honor him for he prophesied me while I can only recognize him as a forebear of whom I ought to be proud.
As for Whitman, I read him (in many parts) with acute pain, but when I write of certain things I find myself using his rythms.
Mentaly I am a Whitman who has learned to wear a colar and a dress shirt (although at times inimical to both) .... And, to be frank, Whitman is to my fatherland ... what Dante is to Italy ...
make truce with you: "make a pact with you" in 1916. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1913
Publication Notes
See Gallup C76
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
Form