A Pact
I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman - I have detested you long enough. I come to you as a grown child Who has had a pig-headed father; I am old enough now to make friends. It was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving. We have one sap and one root - Let there be commerce between us.
A Pact - context Summary
Dedicated to Walt Whitman
Written as a direct address to Walt Whitman and published in Pound's Personae, "A Pact" stages a reconciliatory acknowledgement of influence. Pound admits past resistance but accepts Whitman as a formative forebear, framing their relationship as familial and collaborative. The poem signals a generational handoff: Whitman broke new ground, and Pound now intends to work from the same root, establishing artistic kinship and continuity.
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