Overview of the poem] 'The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter' was published in 1915 in Ezra Pound's third collection of poetry, Cathay: Translations, which contains versions of Chinese poems composed from the sixteen notebooks of Ernest Fenollosa, a scholar of Chinese literature. Pound called the poems in English which resulted from the Fenollosa manuscripts "translations," but as such they are held in contempt by most scholars of Chinese language and literature. However, they have been acclaimed as "…showed first 75 words of 1207 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1207 total…engendering a progression of centered images in a sequence, or pattern, of human thought and emotion.Accordingly, David E. Ward postulates that the guiding principle of Pound's theory is a belief in a shared poetic tradition that allows full expression of the emotional patterns of human experience and response. 'The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter' is an eloquent manifestation of this principle. My own two bits? Heartbreakingly beautiful and poignant; there's nothing more I can say.