Quotes from Ezra Pound

You hate translation??? What of it?? Expect to be carried up to Mt. Helicon in an easy chair?

The man who really knows can tell all that is transmissible in a very few words. The economic problem of the teacher (of violin or of language or of anything else) is how to string it out so as to be paid for more lessons.

thus the light rains, then pours, the liquid and rushing crystal beneath the knees of the gods.

Moon shone in an haze of colours Water boiled in the wells, and died Tchao-ouang to joy of the people.

Alba As cool as the pale wet leaves of lily-of-the-valley She lay beside me in the dawn.

I do not like to remember things any more. I like one little band of winds that blow In the ash trees here: For we are quite alone Here 'mid the ash trees.

Criticism is not a circumscription or a set of prohibitions. It provides fixed points of departure. It may startle a dull reader into alertness.

Incompetence will show in the use of too many words. The reader's first and simplest test of an author will be to look for words that do not function; that contribute nothing to the meaning OR that distract from the MOST important factor of the meaning to factors of minor importance.

He had moved amid her phantasmagoria, Amid her galaxies

you sit tiller " said Kokka " if whenever you move something jangles.

So much barren regret! So many hours wasted! And now I watch, from the window, the rain, the wandering buses.

The shadow of the tent's peak treads on its corner peg marking the hour. The moon split, no cloud nearer than Lucca. In the spring and autumn In "The Spring and Autumn" there are no righteous wars

no, your body-guard is not the town executioner the executioner is not here for the moment the fellow who rides beside your coachman is just a cossak who executes...

Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportioned to their ability AS WRITERS. This is their main use. All other uses are relative, and temporary, and can be estimated only in relation to the views of a particular estimator.

So that the vines burst from my fingers And the bees weighted with pollen Move heavily in the vine-shoots: chirr---chirr---chir-rikk---a purring sound, And the birds sleepily in the branches. ZAGREUS! IO ZAGREUS!

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood, Knowing the truth of things unseen before; Of Daphne and the laurel bow And that god-feasting couple old that grew elm-oak amid the wold. 'Twas not until the gods had been Kindly entreated, and been brought within Unto the hearth of their heart's home That they might do this wonder thing; Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood And many a new thing understood That was rank folly to my head before.

I, who have seen you amid the primal things, Was angry when they spoke your name In ordinary places. — Ezra Pound, from "Francesca," Selected Poems of Ezra Pound . (New Directions January 17, 1957)

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 bad writer wants to do harm.

Fac deum!" "Est factus.

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.

Nay, whatever comes one hour was sunlit and the most high gods may not make boast of any better thing than to have watched that hour as it passed.

I resolved that at 30 I would know more about poetry than any man living, that I would know what was accounted poetry everywhere, what part of poetry was "indestructible," what part could not be lost by translation and—scarcely less important—what effects were obtainable in one language only and were utterly incapable of being translated.

Democracy is now currently defined in Europe as a 'country run by Jews

Christ can very well stand as an heroic figure. The hero need not be of wisdom all compounded. Also he is not wholly to blame for the religion that's been foisted on to him. As well blame me for . . . for all the bunk in vers libre.