Tubs And Passion Essay Sample

The poem is about the disappointment of idealized love, that is, ``our chivalrous passion``. In Pound`s view, the woman wishes this to be maintained, ``O my much praised,” but for Pound there has been a slow cooling of it. This has led him to be dissatisfied with her, who he addresses directly as, ``but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady``. That he refers to her as a lady reveals he sees her that way because of chivalrous passion, and notably, not mainly as a woman. He uses the image of a white porcelain bathtub because it suggests a kind of purity. However, that purity – acting in a chivalrous way – cannot retain the heat of passion. The passion ``gives out``, or, ``goes tepid``, because the receptacle cannot sustain it and wasn`t designed to do so. For the poet, purity and passion are at odds. Hence, his intimated disappointment, for which he infers she is at fault by suggesting she is, ``not-altogether-satisfactory``.
The poem makes me think of the kind of graffiti you see on trains and bridges. The graffiti artist uses words like pictures to get your attention. Unlike a lot of advertisements, which try to sell you something, graffiti just try to get your attention. Artists, like Picasso, and poets, like Pound, don`t try to sell you something. They want you to reflect on things, to experience things, so see things differently.
Pound uses a short form because its impact is sudden, like a sudden recognition. This contrasts with the fact that it has taken time, ``a slow cooling``, for his passion to subside. The short form also forces the reader to reflect more than with a longer poem, where more details are given. It recalls what Picasso said about Guernica, that the painting, ``goes on changingaccording to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it``. With the painting, the images act like symbols and come from different periods and places. The bull comes from cave paintings and the people are like African art: it doesn`t look real. Pound`s poem works in the same way. Normally we do not associate porcelain bathtubs and passion. The image acts like Picasso`s symbols. They get your attention, arrest you, and force you to reflect because the things involved are disparate: a horse, a bull; war /a bathtub; passion.
Modern arts don`t always connect with today`s lifestyle. They ask you to reflect, which takes time, like Picasso`s painting, like Pound`s poem. It took Pound time to make the poem. His passion had to cool before he could write it. Then he had to reflect on that and create a short form people could reflect on. That short form, in turn, takes time to reflect on because of the way he made it. He didn`t create a commercial for a billboard or for the Internet. But in today`s world the pace of life is fast and getting faster and we are swamped with ads where people sell their views through newspapers, T.V., the Internet, or for corporations. If Pound`s poem were put on a billboard today, very few people would look at it because it wasn`t made to sell something. People wouldn`t `buy` it because it`s not selling anything. That doesn`t mean it isn`t great. What it means is it would be ignored because it is not what people want to hear, what they want to buy.