Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)
American expatriate poet, musician and critic who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in early to mid-20th century poetry.
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Artists are the antennae of the race but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists.
Literature is news that STAYS news.
Nothing written for pay is worth printing. ONLY what has been written AGAINST the market.
"You damn sadist!" said mr. cummings,
"you try to make people think."
Hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but the one "Sordello."
My worst mistake was the stupid suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism, all along.
Real education must ultimately be limited to one who INSISTS on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.
The temple is holy because it is not for sale.
But the one thing you shd. not do is suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.
The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.
AT ABOUT THIS POINT the weak-hearted reader usually sits down in the road, removes his shoes and weeps that he 'is a bad linguist' or that he or she can't possibly learn all those languages. One has to divide the readers who want to be experts from those who do not, and divide, as it were, those who want to see the world from those who merely want to know WHAT PART OF IT THEY LIVE IN.
It is better to present one image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous work.
Poets who are not interested in music are, or become, bad poets.
One discards rhyme, not because one is incapable of rhyming neat, fleet, sweet, meet, treat, eat, feet but because there are certain emotions or energies which are nor represented by the over-familiar devices or patterns.
Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.
The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets literature decay than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts.
Poetry must be as well written as prose.
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