A Girl – Poster

Description

An poster detailing “A Girl” by Ezra Pound. 11″ x 17″

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast –
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child – so high – you are,
And all this is folly to the world.

Design

Artists’ Statement

“A Girl” is a confusing, mysterious, illusive poem by Ezra Pound.  After I worked through the poem, writing my notes, coming to my conclusions, I looked online to see if I was remotely correct. Most people had come conclusions different than mine, many of whom thought Ezra Pound was a woman. Sounds like people do not know what “A Girl” is about.  I think I do.
 
The first stanza documents the speaker’s growing love for the girl.  The tree is the girl and the love for the girl, entering “into” the speaker in line 1.  From the there, the love grows, the sap ascending through the arms, the tree growing downward.  The love began as emotional, stemming from the heart, brain, and eyes, moving into the physical, the arms, hands, and legs.  As the love grows, the tree grows, developing rings that signify the memories the speaker has with the girl.  The speaker is engrossed in love with the girl and it is an immensely emotional and physical experience.
 
During the second stanza, the speaker says the girl is the tree that is inside his body, he is covered in “moss,” a fast growing, obvious, declarative notion of his love for her.  She is the moss that he is obsessed with.  In line three, the speaker declares the girl is a field of violets in the wind.  There is lots of energy in this statement, a sense of a breathtaking sight, overwhelming in nature.  Ezra Pound ends the poem with “And all this is folly to the world.”  This kind of love is often overlooked and scoffed at, an immature, youthful love that is seen as folly to most.  The speaker is disheartened but will not let the world’s ideas determine the outcome of his love.
 
This poem fails to mention the girls emotion, or even if she knows the speaker is engulfed in her being.  The tree imagery is powerful in that love like a tree will live a long time, through good and bad weather, through the changes, through the consistencies.  “A Girl” reflects a sense of what true love should be, an intense desire, disregarding the world’s thinking.  However, due to the youthful, possibly immature nature of the love, the speaker may be just a tad too head over heals with the mossy tree that is the girl.