Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Poundwas an expatriate American poet and critic, and a major figure in the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his development of Imagism, a movement derived from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language. His best-known works include Ripostes, Hugh Selwyn Mauberleyand the unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth30 October 1885
CityHailey, ID
CountryUnited States of America
I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, Mamma, can I open the light? She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art.
Poetry is a very complex art.... It is an art of pure sound bound in through an art of arbitrary and conventional symbols.
In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
Be not cheap or mediocre in desiring.
If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.
The only chance for victory over the brainwash is the right of every man to have his ideas judged one at a time. You never get clarity as long as you have these packaged words, as long as a word is used by twenty-five people in twenty-five different ways. That seems to me to be the first fight, if there is going to be any intellect left.
Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.
The book shd. be a ball of light in one's hand.
Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cucc. Groweth sed, and bloweth med, And springth the wude nu, Sing cuccu!
Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art.
And the days are not full enough And the nights are not full enough And life slips by like a field mouse Not shaking the grass
It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself.
Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.
Poetry is a language pared down to its essentials.