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
'Tis not need we know our every thought Or see the work shop where each mask is wrought Wherefrom we view the world of box and pit, Careless of wear, just so the mask shall fit And serve our jape's turn for a night or two.
Allow me to say that I would long since have committed suicide had desisting made me a professor of Latin.
Quiet this metal! Let the manes put off their terror, let them put off their aqueous bodies with fire. Let them assume the milk-white bodies of agate. Let them draw together the bones of the metal.
Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds.
Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea.
The jargon of sculptors is beyond me. I do not know precisely why I admire a green granite female, apparently pregnant monster with one eye going around a square corner.
I could I trust starve like a gentleman. It's listed as part of the poetic training, you know.
If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point.
A heroic figure... not wholly to blame for the religion that's been foisted on him.
And the betrayers of language ...... n and the press gang And those who had lied for hire; The perverts, the perverters of language, the perverts, who have set money-lust Before the pleasures of the senses; howling, as of a hen-yard in a printing-house, the clatter of presses, the blowing of dry dust and stray paper, foetor, sweat, the stench of stale oranges.
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.
Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust the great artists.
Somebody said that I am the last American living the tragedy of Europe.
Any damn fool can be spontaneous.