Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most

Hear now, children of wisdom, the confession of Robert Morgan: “Pound’s translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.” These words are not idle reminiscence but a testimony of awakening. For in them we see how the encounter with foreign voices, carried across oceans and centuries, can open the eyes of a poet to new forms, new rhythms, new revelations of the eternal. Morgan names two pillars of the modern age—Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot—yet places first the influence of ancient China, as refracted through Pound’s daring translations.

Ezra Pound, restless and visionary, sought to break English poetry free from its heavy Victorian robes. He turned eastward, to the delicate precision of Chinese poetry, finding in it clarity, brevity, and crystalline imagery. In works like Cathay (1915), though imperfect and filtered through his own imagination, Pound revealed to the West a new way of seeing: that a poem could be as sharp as a single stroke of ink, as luminous as a lantern in the dark. When Morgan speaks of this as “the most important thing” he read, he acknowledges that such encounters can redirect the course of one’s own voice, as a stream is altered by a new tributary.

Eliot, who came “a little bit later” in Morgan’s journey, brought another dimension: the weight of tradition, the fragments of ancient myth woven into modern despair, the solemn cadence of the prophet mourning a broken age. If Pound was the innovator, Eliot was the unifier, binding the chaos of modernity with the echoes of scripture, ritual, and history. Together, these two figures reshaped modern poetry, and together they reshaped Morgan. Yet it was Pound’s translations that first unlocked the gate, showing how a foreign vision could illuminate one’s own path.

Consider the story of a Japanese haiku carried westward in translation. In seventeen syllables, Bash? described a frog leaping into an old pond—water’s sound, silence broken. For centuries, this tiny image remained in the East. But when it crossed into English, it changed the way poets thought: they saw that a world could be contained in a breath, that poetry need not sprawl like an epic but could strike like lightning. So it was with Pound’s rendering of Chinese poetry: a doorway into a universe of brevity, suggestion, and imagistic power. Through this door walked Morgan, as many before and after him.

This tale teaches us that no tradition is solitary. Poetry is not confined by borders or languages. The song of a Tang dynasty poet can stir the heart of a modern American; the lament of Eliot can echo alongside the lantern-light of Li Bai. The poet who closes their ears to foreign voices will be poor; the poet who listens to many tongues will be rich beyond measure. Morgan’s reverence for Pound’s translation reminds us that influence is not always direct—it is often filtered, transformed, passed like a torch across generations and geographies.

Therefore, the lesson is clear: seek out the words of distant lands. Do not remain enclosed within your own tradition, for the river of poetry is fed by countless springs. Read the translations of Chinese, Persian, African, and Arabic verse. Listen to the cadence of tongues not your own, and let them reshape your rhythm, your imagery, your silence. Just as Morgan found his voice awakened by Pound and Eliot, so too can your voice be deepened by the voices of others long gone.

In practice, let each seeker take up a book of translated poems and linger over it daily. Speak the lines aloud, even if they are not in your language of birth. Notice how the images differ, how the music changes, how the vision expands. Then carry that fire into your own writing, your own speech, your own seeing of the world. For poetry thrives not in isolation, but in communion. The poet is not only heir to their people, but to all peoples.

Thus Morgan’s testimony stands: Pound’s translation of Chinese poetry was a gate, Eliot a companion. Together, they reveal that the path of poetry is both discovery and inheritance, both innovation and tradition. And so we too must walk it—with open eyes, with listening hearts, with reverence for every tongue that sings across the ages.