"The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" is a four stanza poem, written in free verse, and loosely translated by Ezra Pound from a poem by Chinese poet Li Bai. It first appeared in Pound's 1915 collection Cathay. It is the most widely anthologized poem of the collection.[1] In addition to "The Jewell Stairs' Grievance" and "The Exile's Letter", also included in the collection, Zhaoming Qian has referred to "The River Merchant's Wife" as an "imagist and vorticist [masterpiece]".[2]
The poem is written from the perspective of a girl married to a river merchant, and describes her gradually increasing affection for him and the pain she feels when he is away.[3]