Ezra Pound Quotes - Page 4

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• A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

  Ezra Pound

  Definitions, Classic, Fit

  Ezra Pound (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.12, New Directions Publishing

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• A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.

  Ezra Pound

  Men, Expression, Genius

  1918 Letter to J B Yeats, 4 Feb.

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• And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.

  Ezra Pound

  Beautiful, New York, Stars

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• The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.

  Ezra Pound

  Artist, Doe, Literature

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• A general loathing of a gang or sect usually has some sound basis in instinct.

  Ezra Pound

  Sound, Loathing, Gang

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• Utter originality is, of course, out of the question.

  Ezra Pound

  Originality, Courses

  Ezra Pound (1950). “The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941”, p.6, New Directions Publishing

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• Poetry is a very complex art.... It is an art of pure sound bound in through an art of arbitrary and conventional symbols.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Poetry, Sound

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• The artist is the antenna of the race.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Artist, Race

  Ezra Pound, Timothy Materer (1985). “Pound/Lewis: The Letters of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, the Correspondence of Ezra Pound”, p.63, New Directions Publishing

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• The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets its literature decay, and lets good writing meet with contempt, 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.

  Ezra Pound

  Letting Go, Country, Children

  "Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry".

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• Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are. Come, my friend, and remember that the rich have butlers and no friends, And we have friends and no butlers. (excerpt from 'The Garrett')

  Ezra Pound

  No Friends, Remember, Rich

  Ezra Pound, “The Garrett”

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• The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.

  Ezra Pound

  People, Church, Literature

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• Fit for kings, formal gardens afford an earthly Elysium and the odd impression that we mere men might actually control nature for a time.

  Ezra Pound

  Kings, Men, Garden

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• The ant's a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance.

  Ezra Pound

  Courage, Learning, Men

  Cantos no. 81, l. 148 (1948)

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• Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.

  Ezra Pound

  Squares, Giving, Mind

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• A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.

  Ezra Pound

  Men, Civilization, Giving

  Ezra Pound (1952). “Guide to Kulchur”, p.137, New Directions Publishing

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• A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.

  Ezra Pound

  Age, Literature, Language

  John Patrick Sullivan, Ezra Pound, Sextus Propertius (1964). “Ezra Pound and Sextus Propertius: a study in creative translation”

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• And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.

  Ezra Pound

  Moving, Cutting, Knights

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• The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, Secret, Lap

  Ezra Pound, Michael Dirda (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.6, New Directions Publishing

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• 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

  Past, Mind, Masters

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• Discoveries are made by gluttons and addicts. The man who forgets to eat and sleep has an appetite for fact, for interrelations among causes.

  Ezra Pound

  Sleep, Men, Discovery

  Ezra Pound (1952). “Guide to Kulchur”, p.100, New Directions Publishing

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• 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

  Poetry, Elements, Likes

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• We do NOT know the past in chronological sequence. It may be convenient to lay it out anesthetized on the table with dates pasted on here and there, but what we know we know by ripples and spirals eddying out from us and from our own time.

  Ezra Pound

  Time, Past, Here And There

  Ezra Pound (1980). “Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts”, p.253, New Directions Publishing

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• Religion I have defined as "Another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art".

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Religion, Atheism

  "Ezra Pound's Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals". Volume 10,

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• Technique is the test of sincerity.

  Ezra Pound

  Technique, Tests, Sincerity

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• If a patron buys from an artist who needs money (needs money to buy tools, time, food), the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Money, Needs

  Ezra Pound, Timothy Materer (1991). “The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound to John Quinn: 1915–1924”, p.2, Duke University Press

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