Portrait d'une Femme Analysis

Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our...

Blank Verse, or Unrhymed Iambic PentameterPound is often called one of the first promoters of free verse (or, as they say in French, vers libre). His "In a Station of the Metro" recalls the haiku f...

The speaker doesn't reveal a lot about himself in this poem. The first time he mentions himself, he uses the first-person plural, "our" (1), which places him in a group, rather than setting him off...

The poem takes us to the Sargasso Sea in its first line but then switches to London in its second. This jump between an oceanic to an urban setting occurs throughout "Portrait d'une Femme." We seem...

"Portrait d'une Femme" is filled with miscellaneous objects and experiences that the speaker associates with the woman, a "sea-hoard of deciduous things" (25). This phrase perfectly exemplifies the...

The first thing we notice about the title is that it's not in English. Ah, those months of sitting through Madame Brunot's French class have finally paid off: "Portrait d'une Femme" is French for "...

Esoteric ObscuroramaLook, Ezra Pound is a really smart guy, and he's read a lot of stuff – probably a lot more than any of us will ever read. He's a walking Wikipedia, and he isn't too shy about...

(5) Tree LineBelieve it or not, this is not one of Pound's most difficult poems. It lacks the wide range of foreign vocabulary and obscure allusions that characterize his later poems, such as Hugh...

Pound had a penchant for dressing flamboyantly. In college, at the University of Pennsylvania, he wore a green Moroccan robe. In London he wore a Stetson cowboy hat. Literary scholars have claimed...

PGIn a poem about a woman written by a macho guy like Pound, we'd expect a few sexual innuendos or steamy descriptions. Instead we get, basically, a bunch of "facts that go nowhere": mandrakes, amb...

General Influences and Inspirations:Henry James, The Portrait of a LadyRobert Browning, "My Last Duchess" Florence Farr Parallel Poems:T.S. Eliot, "Portrait of a Lady"William Carlos Williams, "Port...