What are some literary devices used in "The Seafarer" by Ezra Pound?

There are
two main poems entitled "The Seafarer." The first was written in Anglo-Saxon and
published in the tenth century. The second was a re-imagining of the poem by Ezra Pound in the
first part of the twentieth century. Other poets have also undertaken to write poetry based on
the original poem, but Pound's poem is probably the most prominent. 

Ezra
Pound was remarkably aware of the history of literature, including Medieval literature. His
poetry often reflected his knowledge, and his version of the Seafarer is no exception. In order
to understand how he used the techniques of poetry (literary devices), let's look at the
Medieval Seafarer. 

Referenced below is a webpage that has both the original
Anglo-Saxon and a modern English translation. You can get the meaning of the poem from the
modern translation, but to understand the construction of the poem, it is important to look at
the Anglo-Saxon version. The poet uses short lines which are grouped in pairs, but one technique
used is that of . Here are some examples:

"si¾as secgan" (line
2a)

"bitre breostceare" (line 4a)

Poets use the
sound of words as a way of uniting a poem. Sometimes they use rhyme, sometimes meter, and
sometimes the vowel and consonant sounds of the words themselves. This attention to sound
differentiates poetry from prose. The Medieval writer uses alliteration quite often; that is,
the first letter of each word in some lines is the same. 

Pound's version
does the same:

May I for my own self song's truth
reckon, 

Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days 

Hardship endured oft. 

Bitter breast-cares have I abided
(lines 1-4)

A second device Pound uses is . Pound was
part of a movement called Imagism, which encouraged poets to use just the words they needed to
flesh out an image and not all the flowery filler words Victorian poets used to fill a metrical
pattern. Imagist poetry records experiences in vivid ways. 

 

Pound likely chose the original poem to work with because the Medieval writer wrote
in a vivid style without filler.

Storms there beat the
stony cliffs,
where the tern spoke,
icy-feathered;
always the eagle
cried at it,
dewy-feathered (Modern translation of Seafarer, lines 24a-25a)

It's easy to imagine these images. Pound does a similar thing
with his version:

Did for my games the
gannet's clamour, 

Sea-fowls, loudness was for me laughter, 

The mews' singing all my mead-drink. 

Storms, on the
stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern 

In icy feathers; full oft the
eagle screamed 

With spray on his pinion (lines 21-25).

Literary devices are part of the craft of poetry. Poets allow
them to surface in their poems and then polish their poems to bring out these relationships
between words. They do so to enhance meaning and unity in their work.
href="http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=text&id=Sfr">http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=text&id=Sfr
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seafarer_(poem)">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seafarer_(poem)
href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44917/the-seafarer">https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44917/the-seafarer

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