E-mail this site to a friend, or write to the editor..

          # 1—That same year—1917—Pound responded to “Reflections” in a review of Eliot’s poetry by returning to his initial point: 

In a recent article Mr. Eliot contended, or seemed to contend, that good vers libre was little more than a skillful evasion of the better known English meters. His article was defective in that he omitted all consideration of meters depending on quantity, alliteration, etc.; in fact, he wrote as if all meters were measured by accent.   

Neither Eliot’s oversimplification nor Pound’s insistence on subtleties much impressed the horde of fashionable vers librists who suddenly appeared in all the little magazines, and whose progeny continue to this day.   

*** 

# 2—In this, he is not entirely blameless. “To break the pentameter, that was the first heave,” as Pound famously declared, but he never said what the second revolution would bring. I suspect that Pound wanted poems to be written in several meters, rather than the repetition of a single foot, no matter how varied. Why not a stanza of trochees, followed by dactyls, followed by some other foot? As he proclaimed, "As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome." Varied feet then, not variable as William Carlos Williams so characteristically misconstrued.

| Home |  

To report broken links or problems accessing this website,
email : Webmaster.

© 2005 Contemporary Poetry Review