Page 25 - Studio International - April 1967

In the version by Pound a visual sense is they clearly adapted its visual mode of
activated, as the eye takes in the divided expression for both issues of Blast. Such
images as units of print within the context of features of arrangement and type size are
surrounding blank white space. Pound sug- visual characteristics of Vorticist prose.
gests this procedure in Canto XX when he In another poem in `Contemporania' Pound
interjects: 'clear shapes,/Broken, disrupted...'. devised a still more definite visual 'design' —
In order for his spatial device to be observed activated by the same principle of 'masses in
in the printing of the poem, Pound had to relation'. He continues in his letter to the
insist that his 'unconventional' typography be editor of Poetry:
observed. He wrote to the editor of Poetry: In the 'Metro' hokku, I was careful, I think, to
I'm deluded enough' to think there is a rhythmic indicate spaces between the rhythmic units, and I
stuff, and I was careful to
system in the d want them observed. (Letters, p. 53)
type it as I wanted it written, i.e. as to line ends These instructions for spacing were observed
and breaking and capitals. (Letters of Ezra and the poem appeared in Poetry (April,
Pound, ed. D. D. Paige, p. 53). 1913) :
`The Garret' appeared in the April, 1913,
issue of Poetry as a part of his ''Contemporania'
IN A STATION OF THE METRO
sequence. The 'segment' in question was
printed as Pound intended. However, the
The apparition of the faces in the crowd:
compositional design of the total poem was
Petals on a wet, black bough.
altered. In the original manuscript version,
''The Garret' presents a rather interesting
What is surprising is that this version of
''pattern' —in terms of a visual design based on
''Metro' was never reprinted in accord with
line length and line inter-spacing :
THE GARRET
Cover of Ripostes, 1915, as illustrated in Personae
(D. Shakespeare's design). It seems of interest
Come let us pity those who are better off than we are. that in 1915 for the fourth re-issue of his Ripostes
poems and for his Catholic Anthology Pound chose 1 Gaudier-Brzeska (New Directions edition, 1960),
Come, my friend, and remember that the
as cover illustrations non-figurative designs p. 81. Originally these remarks were part of 'a
rich have butlers and no friends, of geometric shapes set into relation.
And we have friends and no butlers. rather informal lecture'.
2 Blasting and Bombardiering, p. 36.
Come let us pity the married and the unmarried. ''Contemporania' as his 'new work'.9 Poems 3 Herbert Read, Private correspondence, 14 Nov.
like 'The Garret' suggest the invention of a 1966.
visual rhythmic structure for Imagiste poems. 4 J. C. Taylor, Futurism, The Museum of Modem
Dawn enters with little feet This is to say that Ezra Pound was not attempt- Art, p. 111.
like a gilded Pavlova, ing an 'Abstract' poem; rather than he, like 5 Gaudier-Brzeska, p. 126.
And I am near my desire. Cana, would adapt 'new' devices from con- 6 Ibid. p. 82.
Nor has life in it aught better temporaries. To the extent Pound succeeds in 7 'Affirmations', The New Age, XVI, No. 3, p. 350.
Than this hour of clear coolness, this experiment with image-phrases and lines 8 I quote from the manuscript copy of this poem.
The hour of waking together. ''in relation', the sense of a visual design in his It indicates a visual separation of these three lines
poem parallels certain sculpture by Jacob into a distinct sub-stanza, set apart by several
One may emphasize the pattern artificially Epstein and especially Gaudier-Brzeska.'° spaces above and below. This linear separation does
by presenting the lines in terms of the mass Ezra Pound's interests in a primary form of not occur in subsequent printed texts of this poem.
and space relations they construct: visual arrangement, in colour-mass relations, cf. Poetry, April 1913, p. 3 and Personae (1926) , p . 92 .
in 'form' and 'pattern', seem closely related to 9 Letters, p. 60.
the work of certain other avant-garde English 10 'The Garret', 'Metro' and similar compositions
artists. The aesthetic of 'masses in relation' (1912-15) reflect the poet's enthusiasm for intri-
can be found in drawings by Wyndham guing colour-mass arrangements in the paintings
Lewis, and woodcuts by Edward Wadsworth, of James McNeal Whistler, and in Japanese prints.
Jessica Dismorr and Dorothy Shakespeare, In 'Metro' the 'little splotches of colour' relate the
especially as illustrated in Blast. Their non- poem to a type of painting 'that would speak only
figurative 'designs' are perceptively described by arrangements in colour', and so to Kandinsky
by a contemporary art historian as `... usually and Expressionism. In 'Les Milwins' (1913) Pound
worked around an unconventional "un- records his awareness of dynamic intensities in
balanced" composition based upon the con- painting: a bright vibrancy of Fauve colours and
trast between open volumes and tightly a geometric composition in diagonals. 'The Game
enclosed spaces.' 11 Earlier literary references of Chess' (1915), is itself 'a theme for a series of
are present as well: the visual design in 'Un paintings' to be based on bold colours, angles of
It would seem that the total design of these coup de Dés' by Mallarmé (more than the light, 'form', and 'pattern'.
lines demonstrate 'masses in relation' brought `Calligrammes' by Apollinaire) and the care- 11 William Lipke, 'Arts Review', August—Septem-
into the structure of a poem. Yet, 'design' as a ful arrangement of prose on the page in The ber, 1965. W. Lipke notes: 'a "Vorticist style"
visual device in a poem need be finally Gentle Art of Making Enemies by Whistler. which was essentially non-figurative grew in part
evaluated in its capacity to enhance a con- Experiments in typographical arrangement, from the 1913 experiments done at Roger Fry's
textual meaning; to aid efficiency of expres- use of space and various-sized print, were Omega Workshops...' Quentin Bell brought to my
sion by containing the subject in an appropri- characteristic of the Futurist poems and prose. attention the 'abstract' design of an Omega rug as
ate form. Pound described the poems in Although the Vorticists repudiated Futurism, an example.