Dec 1, 2008

The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter | Critical Overview

American critic and poet T. S. Eliot has called Pound "the inventor of Chinese poetry" for the twentieth century. Nevertheless, he sees Cathay: Translations, containing the much anthologized poem " The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter," as more than intelligent literary archaeology of poems from eighth century China. It establishes Pound's particular literary genius "for expressing himself through historical masks" that would become the hallmark of his later major work, the Cantos. It is Eliot's critical assessment, furthermore, that the value of Pound's work in this collection...