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
One measure of a civilization, either of an age or of a single individual, is what that age or person really wishes to do. A man's hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.
A man's hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.
A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.
There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and forty-eight.
Men do not understand books until they have had a certain amount of life, until they have seen and lived at least part of their contents
Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity.
The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.
It is difficult to write a paradise when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse. It is obviously much easier to find inhabitants for an inferno or even a purgatorio.
Good art however ''immoral'' is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.
I found after seventy years that I was not a lunatic but a moron.... I should have been able to do better.
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage.
Men do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.
If a patron buys from an artist who needs money, the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.
You let me throw the bricks through the front window. You go in at the back and take the swag.