The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter
"The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" is a poem loosely translated by Ezra Pound from a poem by Chinese poet Li Bai. It first appeared in Pound's 1915 collection Cathay. It is the most widely anthologized poem of the collection.[1] In addition to "The Jewell Stairs' Grievance" and "The Exile's Letter", also included in the collection, Zhaoming Qian has referred to "The River Merchant's Wife" as an "imagist and vorticist [masterpiece]".[2]
The poem is written from the perspective of a girl married to a river merchant, and describes her gradually increasing affection for him and the pain she feels when he is away.[3]
References[]
- ^ Zhang, Yu (Fall 1998). "Ezra Pound's "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter": On Mistranslation Of The Two Allusions". Paideuma. 27 (2/3): 185-194.
- ^ Qian, Zhaoming (2010). The Orient. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-51507-8.
- ^ Hunter, J. Paul (1986). The Norton Introduction to Poetry. Norton.
External links[]
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Categories:
- 1915 poems
- Poetry by Ezra Pound
- American poems
- Chinese poems
- Translations into English
- 20th-century poem stubs