You (Ezra Pound) made your great mistake when you abandoned the poetry business, and set up shop as a wizard in general practice. You wrote, in your day, some very good verse, and I had the pleasure, along with other literary buzzards, of calling attention to it at the time. But when you fell into […]
Poetry Quotes
Poetry, men attain By subtler pain More flagrant in the brain – An honesty unfeigned, A heart unchained, A madness well restrained.
Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
The ultimate can only be expressed in conduct. Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.
Language may die at the hands of the schoolmen: it is regenerated by the poets.
The occasional poet is circumscribed by the narrowness of his subject. Whatever can happen to man has happened so often, that little remains for fancy or invention. We have been all born; we have most of us been married; and so many have died before us, that our deaths can supply but few materials for […]
I never wrote one single Line of Poetry with the least Shadow of public thought.
Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men’s souls.
The characteristick quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is gigantick loftiness. He can please when pleasure is required, but it is his peculiar power to astonish.
When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.
