The Three Poets
The Three Poets - meaning Summary
Three Poets, Three Responses
Pound sketches three poets reacting to Candidia taking a new lover. Each poet adopts a different conventional poetic stance—an extended elegy, a sonnet on feminine mutability, and a brief epigram—so the poem compresses recognizable literary types into a compact scene. Its tone registers both critique and irony, suggesting how standardized genres shape male grief and how poetic form can reduce a real person to a trope.
Read Complete AnalysesCandidia has taken a new lover And three poets are gone into mourning. The first has written a long elegy to 'Chloris', To 'Chloris chaste and cold,' his 'only Chloris'. The second has written a sonnet upon the mutability of woman, And the third writes an epigram to Candidia.
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