Blog Entry 8

Before I paraphrase "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound, I should mention that some literary scholars argue that good poetry cannot be paraphrased because it's not just about words; all of the formal and aural (sound) elements also matter to meaning. Cleanth Brooks, for example, talks about "the resistance which any good poem sets up against all attempts to paraphrase it" (1356). Paraphrasing just translates the words, so it doesn't really get at the full meaning.

Poem:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Paraphrase: Faces of the people in the metro float into view like ghosts. They are busily heading to their destinations in the ordered chaos of the station. Although the lives of each beautiful and fertile, they are also fragile and transitory on the difficult, sad road of our shared existence.

Brooks, Cleanth. "The Heresy of Paraphrase." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001. 1353-1365.