E Pound: L'Art

L'Art

Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,
Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes (look at with great enjoyment)

This poem is truly written in the Imagist  style. It's descriptive and colorful words bring a vivid picture to mind. There is a contradiction in the poem; arsenic is poisonous while strawberries are scrumptious. 

Some possible meanings of the poem:

Pound is being critical of the 
paintings at the time... saying they were all this weird stuff. "Come, let 
us feast our eyes" is sarcastic. 

He is making a comparison between colors, like the green to arsenic, and red to strawberries. it connects things you can touch or relate to, to the poetry, and then states "let our eyes feast," sortof like, let us enjoy this piece of art and dwell in its conception  

It's a description of a piece of art work. "Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth, 
Crushed strawberries!" is referring to the the green and red paint on the canvas. "Come, let us feast our eyes," is the invitation to us to look at the painting. So basically, it is just describing a painting and asking us to think about what it might look like.

It's anti Mussolini. The colors represent the colors of the Italian flag. Green, white and red. Arsenic green is Mussolini poisoning the relative off white innocence of Italy and the blood which would be spilled, in the red of the strawberries.

The title may be misleading, because this poem is not about art as in Picasso but about the loss of virginity. Clearly seen in the „Crushed strawberries!“ which symbolise the virginity, which has both literally and metaphorically been crushed. The mush of strawberries represents indubitably the blood spilt after a night of love and lust. The innocence that is portrayed by “an egg-white cloth” is tainted with “green arsenic”, a poison seeking to destroy all that it embraces. In other words the green will never leave the white and thus the innocence is lost forever.