Fratres Minores
Fratres Minores - meaning Summary
Physical Longing, No Transcendence
Pound satirically criticizes contemporary poets who remain preoccupied with bodily urges and erotic detail. He points out their reliance on inherited classical imagery (he names Ovid) and their exhausted, elaborate metrics. The poem argues that muscular or abdominal sensations and sensual fixations cannot deliver lasting spiritual release or Nirvana. It reads as a terse rebuke of aesthetic indulgence and a reminder that physicality alone fails to produce transcendence.
Read Complete AnalysesWith minds still hovering above their testicles Certain poets here and in France Still sigh over established and natural fact Long since fully discussed by Ovid. They howl. They complain in delicate and exhausted metres That the twitching of three abdominal nerves Is incapable of producing a lasting Nirvana.
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