Quote

Poetry is a language pared down to its essentials.

Ezra Pound

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ezra Pound
Age: 87 †
Born: 1885
Born: October 30
Died: 1972
Died: November 1
Autobiographer
Composer
Economist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Radio Personality
Translator
Writer
Hailey
Idaho
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
Ezra Loomis Pound
Pared
Essentials
Poetry
Language

More quotes by Ezra Pound

Image
Science is unpoetic only to minds jaundiced with sentiment and romanticism . . . the great masters of the past boasted all they could of it and found it magical.
Ezra Pound
Image
Yet the companions of the Muses will keep their collective nose in my books And weary with historical data, they will turn to my dance tune.
Ezra Pound
Image
The concept of genius as akin to madness has been carefully cultivated by the inferiority complex of the public.
Ezra Pound
Image
Go to the adolescent who are smothered in family-- Oh how hideous it is To see three generations of one house gathered together! It is like an old tree with shoots, And with some branches rotted and falling.
Ezra Pound
Image
The serious artist must be as open as nature. Nature does not give all of herself in a paragraph. She is rugged and not set apart into discreet categories.
Ezra Pound
Image
Technique is the test of sincerity.
Ezra Pound
Image
Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.
Ezra Pound
Image
Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.
Ezra Pound
Image
The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.
Ezra Pound
Image
The difference between a gun and a tree is a difference of tempo. The tree explodes every spring.
Ezra Pound
Image
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
Ezra Pound
Image
Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.
Ezra Pound
Image
It doesn't matter which leg of your table you make first, so long as the table has four legs and will stand up solidly when you have finished it.
Ezra Pound
Image
Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds.
Ezra Pound
Image
Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
Ezra Pound
Image
Until you know who has lent what to whom, you know nothing whatever of politics, you know nothing whatever of history, you know nothing of international wrangles.
Ezra Pound
Image
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.
Ezra Pound
Image
Properly, we should read for power.
Ezra Pound
Image
That text is known to them that have the patience to read it, possibly one one-hundredth of one percent of the denizens. They forget it, all save a few Western states. I think somebody in Dakota once read it. The Constitution.
Ezra Pound
Image
There is no topicmore soporific and generally boring than the topic of Ireland as Ireland, as a nation.
Ezra Pound