Simulacra
Simulacra - meaning Summary
City Encounters and Dislocation
Pound catalogs brief, odd urban encounters in which appearances and behavior clash. Each stanza poses a why-question about a figure whose outward trappings—age, clothing, class—contradict expected conduct, producing a sense of dislocation and curiosity. The poem registers the speaker’s puzzled observation of modern city life, where surfaces and identities seem simulacral and uncertain rather than straightforward or authentic.
Read Complete AnalysesWhy does the horse-faced lady of just the unmentionable age Walk down Longacre reciting Swinburne to herself, inaudibly? Why does the small child in the soiled-white imitation fur coat Crawl in the very black gutter beneath the grape stand? Why does the really handsome young woman approach me in Sackville Street Undeterred by the manifest age of my trappings?
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