SOURCE: "Discourse on Ideogrammic Method: Epistemology and Pound's 'Poetics'," in American Literature, Vol. 59, No. 2, May, 1987, pp. 242-56.

In the following essay,. Yee explores the differences between Fenollosa's and Pound's approach to the Chinese ideogrammic method of poetics.

Why is it that none of you study the Odes? For the Odes will help you to incite people's emotions, to observe their feelings, to keep company, to express your grievances. . . . Moreover, they will widen your acquaintance with the names of birds, beasts, plants and trees.—Confucius

For help in understanding Ezra Pound's "ideogrammic method" one almost inevitably turns to Ernest Fenollosa's essay, "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry." After all, Fenollosa's essay provides Pound with this illustration of the method in ABC of Reading (1934):

[A Chinese person] is to define red. How can he do it in a picture that isn't painted in red paint?

He puts...