Ezra Pound’s Blue Dun (Ezra Pound, July 1976, Fly Fisherman Magazine)
[…]
Dark fur from a hare’s ear for a body
a green shaded partridge feather
grizzled yellow cock’s hackle
green wax; harl from a peacock’s tail
bright lower body; about the size of pin
the head should be. can be fished from seven a.m.
till eleven; at which time the brown marsh fly comes on. […]
Pound’s interests were oblique and wide-ranging, and yet our attempts to find an origin for this charming passage have not turned up any evidence that he was either a fly fisherman or fly tier. Although he often boxed with Ernest Hemingway, there is no evidence that he had fished with him. Perhaps it is only that the poet enjoyed the parallel between his own fascination with the importance of the subtle shadings of words and the fly fisherman’s fascination with the importance of the subtle shadings of color in fly tying. For the poet, the slight variation between two words can make all the difference in the value of his poem, just as the slight variation between two colors can make all the difference in the effectiveness of the fly fisherman’s pattern.