The Fault of It Analysis

Some may have blamed us that we cease to speak
Of things we spoke of in our verses early,
Saying: a lovely voice is such as such;
Saying: that lady's eyes were sad last week,
Wherein the world's whole joy is born and dies;
Saying: she hath this way or that, this much
Of grace, this way or that, this much
Of grace, this little misericorde;
Ask us no further word;
If we were proud, then proud to be so wise
Ask us no more of all the things ye heard;
We may not speak of them, they touch us nearly.

.: General Interpretation :.

Tod Lowery
October 31, 2007
Finding “The Fault of It” Within Pound’s Poem: An Explication
The modernist movement stemmed from the rejection of the romantic style of writing. Throughout their careers, the modernists sought to step away from strict line formations, prescriptive rhyme schemes and ornate language that their predecessors had so lovingly accepted as the norm of poetry, which was romanticism. Within their newly founded style, they strived to use the exact word or phrase without any ornate adjectives, which they felt bogged down a poem; the Greeks were the major influences of the modernist movement, because of their use of precise, ordinary language. At the center of the newly founded style of writing was Ezra Pound, an eccentric American writer. Throughout the beginning of the 20th century, Pound found himself amongst the elite modernist writers of the time, such as T. S. Eliot and Ford Madox Ford, while pushing others to expand modernism into other small sub-categories like vorticism or imagism. During his career, Pound embodied the ideals of modernism. The reasons above are why I will be arguing, in this essay, that Pound’s poem “The Fault of It” attempts to ward off romantic critics that impose prescriptive rules to the formation of verse.
As with almost everything one reads, the first thing to be read is the title, which usually offers insight into the text, especially in regards to a poem. By titling the poem “The Fault of It,” Pound creates an ambiguity of meanings right off the bat. We are left to decipher and interpret what the “it” is in the title, seeing that “it” is a pronoun with, seemingly, no noun antecedent. Through this confusion, I came up with two plausible answers to what “it” may be. First off, “it” could be referring to the Romantics, or, secondly, “it” could refer to the modernists, how I derived these interpretations will become clearer as I explicate the poem below.
In the opening lines of the poem, the speaker introduces the readers to what people, most likely critics of the modernist movement, say about the moderns and their disregard for the previous style. Yet again, as in the title, the speaker gives us three more pronouns without antecedents, which are “us”, “we” and “our.” As Rebecca Beasley stated in her essay concerning Pound and his use of ambiguous pronouns, “Pound clearly encourages his readers to imagine that he is voicing the opinions of a group of artists and art lovers who, in setting themselves against what they perceive to be mainstream culture, have styled themselves as guides to modern taste and… societal transformation” (489). This approach to Pound’s writing applies extremely well to this poem where pronouns run rampant without direct antecedents. This interpretation is evident by what is being said in the first two lines which are: “Some may have blamed us that we cease to speak/ Of things we spoke of in our verses early.” The next line “Saying: a lovely voice is such as such,” attacks the critics and prescriptivists that believe poetry should be written in a specific manner concerning idealized concepts. This idea becomes more apparent by reading the next two lines where the speaker of the poem shows how the romantics viewed poetry with “the world’s whole joy,” while the modernists attempt to show life as it really is with the completion of the line above being “is born and dies.”
The idealized concepts of poetry are a sore spot for the speaker. He begins to mock the critics who want this prescription to poetry by mimicking their voices in lines six through eight and repeating several phrases, such as “this way or that” and “this much/ Of grace.” These lines, to me, embody the critics of modernism that wanted fanciful ideals embedded throughout the poem. Another way of reading the line would be to put one’s self in a conversation where one person tells the other that there is only “this way or that” and that one should always speak “of grace” when it comes to poetry. An idea that none of the modernists upheld. Pound finishes these lines with “this little misericorde.” The Oxford English Dictionary explains that the misericorde can be “used to designate or denote elaborate, often bawdy, carvings of scenes from secular or religious life.” With this ending to the line, the speaker asserts, yet again, his negative attitude towards the Romantics with their fanciful language.
In the final four lines, the speaker shifts from sarcastic tones of repetition to a declaration to those critics of the modernist movement, in which the speaker continues to use pronouns that refer to his contemporaries. The speaker boldly states, assumedly to the critics, “Ask us no further word;/ If we were proud, then proud to be so wise.” These passages mean that the speaker no longer wants to be questioned about his writing style or about his predecessors and that they, modernists, feel they are above other forms of writing as exemplified in “proud to be so wise.” Mimicking the syllables of the first two lines, the last two lines neatly wrap-up the poem by first telling “ye,” or the critics, to disregard what was said before them and secondly by informing the critics that the modernists’ predecessors “touch us nearly,” which is why they do not speak of them. Through my explanation of the poem, we can see how Pound’s “The Fault of It” is, in fact, a declaration of what modernists are against and are tired of hearing from the critics and people around them.

Sources Cited
Beasley, Rebecca. “Ezra Pound’s Whistler.” American Literate: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 74 (2002): 485-516.
Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Pound, Ezra. “The Fault of It.” Poetry Archives. 2003. eMule.com. October 30, 2007 <http://emule.com/poetry/?page=poem&poem=5067>.



| Posted on 2007-12-10 | by a guest