Ezra Pound: Poems Lesson Plan

What types of water imagery are present in “Portrait d’une Femme” and how does this imagery inform our understanding of the poem? (Portrait)

Water imagery pervades the poem from start to finish and provides an extended metaphor through which to understand the woman's relationship to those who pursue her. The speaker tells this lady that she is “our Sargasso Sea,” an area in the Atlantic ocean that is bound by strong currents and thus forms a sort of whirlpool. The “bright ships” (the “great minds” that seek her) are perhaps attracted to her as if by the currents of a sea. Pound then writes, “I have seen you sit hours, where something might have floated up.” In other...