Ezra Pound's Quotes

Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Literature is news that stays news.

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet black bough.

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

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds.

A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.

If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.

Rhythm must have meaning.

What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.

Glance is the enemy of vision.

The temple is holy because it is not for sale

A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit.

I have tried to write Paradise Do not move Let the wind speak that is paradise. Let the Gods forgive what I have made Let those I love try to forgive what I have made.

It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.

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.

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.

When words cease to cling close to things, kingdoms fall, empires wane and diminish.

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.

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.

Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. --Ezra Pound

I would hold the rosy, slender fingers of the dawn for you.

small talk comes from small bones

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.

Man reading ought to be a man intensely alive. The book ought to be a ball of light in his hands.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. It doesn't matter whether the good writer wants to be useful, or whether the good writer wants to be harm.

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep (Cantico del Sole)

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.

Don't be blinded by the theorists and a lying press.

Adolf Hitler was a Jeanne d'Arc, a saint. He was a martyr.

M'amour, m'amour what do I love and where are you? That I lost my center fighting the world The Dreams clash and are shattered- and that I tried to make a paradiso terrestre. I have tried to write Paradise Do not move Let the wind speak that is paradise Let the Gods forgive what I have made Let those I love try to forgive what I have made.

What thou lovest well remains,

In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.

Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.

A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in process of losing grip on its empire and on itself.

No teacher has ever failed from ignorance. That is empiric professional knowledge. Teachers fail because they cannot `handle the class.' Real education must ultimately be limited to men how INSIST on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.

The eyes of this dead lady speak to me For here was love, was not to be drowned out. And here desire, not to be kissed away. The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.

where the dead walked and the living were made of cardboard.

It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.

More writers fail from lack of character than from lack of intelligence.

Go in fear of abstractions.

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')

Let the gods speak softly of us

A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not." (on Ezra Pound)

Nothing matter but the quality/ of the affection—/in the end—that has carved the trace in the mind dove sta memoria

The Garden En robe de parade. - Samain Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens, And she is dying piece-meal of a sort of emotional anaemia. And round about there is a rabble Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor. They shall inherit the earth. In her is the end of breeding. Her boredom is exquisite and excessive. She would like some one to speak to her, And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion.

All things are a-flowing,' sage Heraclitus says, but a tawdry cheapness shall outlast all days.

what thou lovest well is thy true heritage what thou lovest well shall not be reft from thee

When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs I am compelled to conclude That man is the superior animal. When I consider the curious habits of man I confess, my friend, I am puzzled

A nation which neglects the perceptions of its artists declines. After a while it ceases to act, and merely survives. There is probably no use in telling this to people who can't see it without being told.

You have been second always. Tragical? No. You preferred it to the usual thing: One dull man, dulling and uxorious, One average mind- with one thought less, each year.

In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

If a man have not order within him He can not spread order about him; And if a man have not order within him His family will not act with due order; And if the prince have not order within him He can not put order in his dominions.

The critic who doesn't make a personal statement, in remeasurements he himself has made, is merely an unreliable critic. He is not a measurer but a repeater of other men's results. KRINO, to pick out for oneself, to choose. That's what the word means.

And round about there is a rabble Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor. They shall inherit the earth.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

Usury is the cancer of the world, which only the surgeon's knife of fascism can cut out of the life of the nations.

Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.

Let us take arms against this sea of stupidities—

If anybody ever shuts you in Indiana...and you don't at least write some unconstrained something or other, I give up hope for your salvation.

What thou lovest well remains. The rest is dross.

The committed student needs to be wide awake, to look and listen closely, to slow down, scrutinize and reflect. The language of poetry is so dense, so multivalent, that it demands a concentrated act of attention — and offers its greatest rewards only to those who reread.

As a bathtub lined with white porcelain, When the hot water gives out or goes tepid, So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.

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.

The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.

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.

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. It was a sort of metaphor, but she was not using it as ornamentation.

But I am like the grass, I can not love you.

L'art Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth, Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.

Things have ends (or scopes) and beginnings. To/ know what precedes and what follows will assist yr/ comprehension of process.

Your interest is in the bloody loam but what I'm after is the finished product.

When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew! Think of a programme which at any rate for a while could bring Hitler, Petain, Montagu Norman, Pavelitch, William Randolph Hearst, Streicher, Buchman, Ezra Pound, Juan March, Cocteau, Thyssen, Father Coughlin, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Arnold Lunn, Antonescu, Spengler, Beverley Nichols, Lady Houston, and Marinetti all into the same boat! But the clue is really very simple. They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings. Behind all the ballyhoo that is talked about ‘godless’ Russia and the ‘materialism’ of the working class lies the simple intention of those with money or privileges to cling to them. Ditto, though it contains a partial truth, with all the talk about the worthlessness of social reconstruction not accompanied by a ‘change of heart’. The pious ones, from the Pope to the yogis of California, are great on the’ change of heart’, much more reassuring from their point of view than a change in the economic system.

Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously into people’s faces, / Will you find your lost dead among them?

Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.

What thou lovest well remains.

You are a fool to seek the kind of art you don't like. You are a fool to read classics because you are told to and not because you like them. You are a fool to aspire to good tastes if you haven't naturally got it.

The individual cannot think and communicate his thought, the governor and legislator cannot act effectively or frame his laws without words, and the solidity and validity of these words is in the care of the damned and despised litterati...when their very medium, the very essence of their work, the application of word to thing goes rotten, i.e. becomes slushy and inexact, or excessive or bloated, the whole machinery of social and of individual thought and order goes to pot.

There is the subtler music, the clear light Where time burns back about th'eternal embers. We are not shut from the thousand heavens: Lo, there are many gods whom we have seen, Folk of unearthly fashion, places splendid, Bulwarks of beryl and of chrysophrase. Sapphire Benacus, in thy mists and thee Nature herself's turned metaphysical, Who can look at that blue and not believe?

Art that sells on production is bad art, essentially. It is art that is made to demand. It suits the public. The taste of the public is bad. The taste of the public is always bad. It is bad because it is not an individual expression, but merely a mania for assent, a mania to be 'in on it'.

No one knows, at sight a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy, There's nothing in it. Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me: Don't kick against the pricks, Accept opinion. The Nineties tried your game And died, there's nothing in it.

دختر درختي به دستانم سبز شده، شيره بر بازوانم جوشيده، درخت در سينه‏ام شكفته -- سر به زير، شاخه‏ها ،چون بازوان، از درونم مي‏بالند. درخت هستي تو ، خزه‌اي تو ، بنفشه‏هايي كه باد در او مي‌پيچد، كودكي هستي بلند بالا ، و جهان اين همه را حماقت مي‌داند :: A Girl The tree has entered my hands, The sap has ascended my arms, The tree has grown in my breast-- Downward, The branches grow out of me, like arms. Tree you are, Moss you are, You are violets with wind above them. A child -- so high -- you are, And all this is folly to the world

Song in the Manner of Housman" O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera.... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera....

The Lake Isle O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop, With the little bright boxes piled up neatly upon the shelves And the loose fragrant cavendish and the shag, And the bright Virginia loose under the bright glass cases, And a pair of scales not too greasy, And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing, For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit. O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, Lend me a little tobacco-shop, or install me in any profession Save this damn’d profession of writing, where one needs one’s brains all the time.

FRANCESCA You came in out of the night And there were flowers in your hands, Now you will come out of a confusion of people, Out of a turmoil of speech about you. I who have seen you amid the primal things Was angry when they spoke your name In ordinary places. I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind, And that the world should dry as a dead leaf, Or as a dandelion seed-pod and be swept away, So that I might find you again, Alone.

And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban nights are like the night there. I have looked down across the city from high windows. It is then that the great buildings lose reality and take on their magical powers. They are immaterial; that is to say, one sees but the lighted windows. Squares after squares of flame, set and cut into the Aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.

My pawing over the ancients and semi-ancients has been one struggle to find out what has been done, once and for all, better than it can ever be done again, and to find out what remains for us to do, and plenty does remain, for if we still feel the same emotions as those who launched a thousand ships, it is quite certain that we came on these feelings differently, through different nuances, by different intellectual gradations. Each age has its own abounding gifts yet only some ages transmute them into matters of duration.

Don't imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art of music. Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or try to conceal it. Don't allow "influence" to mean merely that you mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets who you happen to admire.

Another struggle has been the struggle to keep the value of a local and particular character, of a particular culture in this awful maelstrom, this awful avalanche toward uniformity. The whole fight is for the conservation of the individual soul. The enemy is the supression of history; against us is the bewildering propaganda and brainwash, luxury and violence. Sixty years ago, poetry was the poor man’s art: a man off on the edge of the wilderness, or Frémont, going off with a Greek text in his pocket. A man who wanted the best could have it on a lonely farm. Then there was the cinema, and now television.

PARACELSUS IN EXCELSIS Being no longer human, why should I Pretend humanity or don the frail attire? Men have I known and men, but never one Was grown so free an essence, or become So simply element as what I am. The mist goes from the mirror and I see. Behold! the world of forms is swept beneath- Turmoil grown visible beneath our peace, And we that are grown formless, rise above- Fluids intangible that have been men, We seem as statues round whose high-risen base Some overflowing river is run mad, In us alone the element of calm.

Two mystic states can be dissociated: the ecstatic-beneficent-and-benevolent, contemplation of the divine love, the divine splendour with goodwill toward others. And the bestial, namely the fanatical, the man on fire with God and anxious to stick his snotty nose into other men's business or reprove his neighbour for having a set of tropisms different from that of the fanatic's, or for having the courage to live more greatly and openly. The second set of mystic states is manifest in scarcity economists, in repressors etc. The first state is a dynamism. It has, time and again, driven men to great living, it has given them courage to go on for decades in the face of public stupidity. It is paradisical and a reward in itself seeking naught further... perhaps because a feeling of certitude inheres in the state of feeling itself. The glory of life exists without further proof for this mystic.