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
The primary pigment of poetry is the IMAGE.
Poetry must be as well written as prose.
To break the pentameter, that was the first heave
Poetry is a very complex art.... It is an art of pure sound bound in through an art of arbitrary and conventional symbols.
Poetry is a language pared down to its essentials.
In verse one can take any damn constant one likes, one can alliterate, or assone, or rhyme, or quant, or smack, only one MUST leave the other elements irregular.
Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.
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
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.
Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity.
There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, ''It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.''
There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and forty-eight.
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.