“The+Encounter”+-+Ezra+Pound

= "The Encounter" - Ezra Pound =

> All the while they were talking the new morality > Her eyes explored me. And when I arose to go > Her fingers were like the tissue Of a Japanese paper napkin.

The poem goes to extensive lengths in cultivating a rich and intense “image” of what can be sensed, but not subjected to moralizing discourse. Eliminating such moralized language being the primary concern of Pound’s Imagist movement. The imagination of what this lady offers is inseparable from the sense of touch – very nearly allowing the text to become texture.

If we examine the descriptions of images, including of the lady’s fingers with the texture of a Japanese paper napkin, there is an intense feeling of finality. This poem resists judgment in terms of general categories, not simply because of subject confusion, but because the items present are intensely sensual. Pound has created images which are not symbols carrying meaning, so much as they are details bearing witness to some kind of force or even that is impossible to generalize about.