Ezra Pound in his poem explains the importance of free verse.

“A girl” explains the feelings of a

girl suffering from Apollo. The poet tells that the girl is someone who is special and should be
proud of that instead of being ashamed. If God has made her this special way this means that she
is different from others.

In the first stanza, we come across how the reader is fascinated by the things that will progress.
The tree looks like it absorbs the poet and fills the sap with his veins.

‘A Girl’ by Ezra Pound Analysis

The reader comes across a communion between the poet and tree. The poet may actually be
holding the metaphoric person/tree in his hands as it sways toward him, allowing its essence to
invade him. The poem’s imagery in metaphorical terms seems easy yet passionate, living yet
inanimate, tender yet strong, and soft yet seething.

“The tree has grown into my breast.

Downward,

The branches grown out of me like arms.”

What we see in the second stanza is that the poet speaks to which is referred to as the child. The
mossy tree looks very young and seems tall. The poet describes the violets, which seems very
fragile even in the wind, surrounds the tree. To the world, this playful talk is nothing but
foolishness. Often, this simple joy is lost to the adult, but here it spreads to the narrator.

“A child-so high-you are

And all this is folly to the world.”

There is an alternate interpretation of the poem which is based on Greek mythology since Pound
himself did not depict a clear meaning of his poem to the readers. It is the story of Daphne and
Apollo. Apollo loved Daphne and Daphne detested him. Apollo pursued relentlessly Daphne.
Daphne begged her father to transform her so that Apollo could never recognize her and that is
what her father agreed to. The skin of the girl transformed into bark along with the hair becoming
leaves. Her arms were transformed into branches, and the feet became rooted to the
ground. Apollo embraced the branches, but alas, the branches shrank away from him.

“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.”

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The poet narrates that the girl is very much different and indeed special. No other girl has this
specific vegetation grown on her body; be it imaginative.

The poet says that this is the time when the girl needs to stand up and show the world that she is
as capable as others are in performing any task that she is assigned. When the poet states that,
“You are violets with wind above them” the poet makes it is clear that it is now impossible for the
girl to take a step downwards.

A Girl by Ezra Pound Tone

This poem even though is based on the ancient mythology but it can also be said that through
this poem he wanted to share a message, which is more definitive. Something that was very clear
in his mind. As though he had lived a similar situation: falling in love with a girl who does not
love him the same way so she vanishes into the world, almost as though she is part of a landscape.
The poem comes across a conversation, which is not difficult to understand, and the short use of
words does help in a better understanding of the poem. No one really knows what Pound actually
wanted to say in his poem, if it was all about the mythology or something more personal or a
message for the society.

In this poem, we observe two different points of views. Daphne narrates the start of the poem. She
is describing her feelings when being transformed. That is for the first five lines. Daphne’s
transformation is something more than just becoming a tree; it can also represent a girl wanting
to break free, to escape her life, just like a poem, a way of putting everything on hold and
expressing in a different way what we feel about things.

Ezra Pound chose to employ a split narration in this poem. We come across the first five lines of
the poem and it seems that it is Daphne, who is narrating the whole poem. In these lines, we
come across Daphne’s description of her transformation. However, it is likely that according to
Pound the second part of the poem is from the perspective of Apollo. Even though Pound kept
the ancient Greek mythology while writing the poem, it is worth mentioning that there are other
various interpretations of this poem.

The first narrator could be an older child detailing her figurative transformation into a tree,
letting her imagination run wild. Pound avoided using any rigid structures throughout the poem
and hence made the poem easy to understand a conversation between two narrators. The free
verse that Pound uses makes this poem whimsical and free from a sort of mythological factors; a
child’s imagination is not constrained by any structure just like the poem, which is also devoid of
the same.

According to Pound, it is the right of every boy or girl who is born with a deformity to remain
happy. As the vegetation keeps on growing on her body, the world tortures her more and more to
an extent that the girl is disheartened. Critics over the course of years have continued with the
real purpose and real interpretation of the poem with stating that the true interpretation of the
poem is depicted through mythology or it might just be a lesson on the imagination of the
childhood.
 Poem Analysis
Poem: A girl
Poet: Ezra Pound

In the poem " A girl" the poet Ezra Pound expresses his perspective on imagination to a

child.He states"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." From this

quote one can imagine the poet imagining that he is a tree. His body is the tree and his

arms are the branches."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" In this quote one can

also infer that the poet is talking to the little girl. In which he tells her that she can

become her imagination. This is when she imagines herself as a tree. Then he goes on to

say you are the tree, the moss, and the violets reassuring her imagination in more detail.

In a way he sends the girl a message by implying that she should never lose her

imagination even when she grows up and goes out in the world.

Literary Devices

In the poem " a girl" there are many literary devices such as a simile. An example of a

simile is "The branches grow out of me like arms". This is a simile because it is drawing

parallels or comparing two unrelated objects by using "like" or "as" which are the

branches and his arms.