>I had was on the phone last night, and +inter alia+, something strange
>emerged with regard to interpretations of Williams' "This is Just to Say"
>and Pound's "In a Station of the Metro".
>
>I'd always (and it never occured to me there was any other way of reading)
>taken the Williams poem as describing a guest's note of apology to a host,
>and the "petals" of Pound's Metro as petals blown off a blossom and
>sticking to a black branch.
>
>My interlocutor (equally unquestioningly) had taken the Williams poem as a
>husband's aplogy to his wife, and the petals in Metro as flowers blooming
>on a branch.
On the whole, I'm with your interlocuter (although the Glaswegian
'translation' of the Williams by Tom Leonard is probably a phone call the
next morning)...
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Reserved books. Reserved land. Reserved flight.
And still property is theft.
Phyllis Webb
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