Ezra Pound Quotes

If I wrote in a sonnet form, I would be distorting. Or if I had some great new idea for line breaks and I used it in a poem, but it's really not right for that poem, but I wanted it, that would be distorting.

Till now poets were privileged to insert a certain proportion of nonsense - very far in excess of one-half of one per cent - into their otherwise sober documents.

I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.

A poem can have an impact, but you can't expect an audience to understand all the nuances.

I think everything should be in verse. 'The New York Times' should be in verse.

When I discovered the lyric poem, that advanced not by narrative steps but by blocks and layers of imagery, I said, 'Gee, I probably could do that. So let me try that.'

I think fiction goes to poetry for the intensity of its use of language.

And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.

I've always thought my poems told stories.

I'd say people do need some help with poetry because I think poetry just helps takes us to places that Americans aren't always accustomed to going.

Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.

I never abandoned either forms or freedom. I imagine that most of what could be called free verse is in my first book. I got through that fairly early.

The passion and spontaneity in music is all gone.

A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste, judgement, deduction.

This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.

Attempts to put my poems to music have had disastrous results in all cases. And the poem, if it's written with the ear, already has been set to its own verbal music as it was composed.

I am not quite a poet but I am something of the kind.

There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.

The commonest error made in relation to poetry is that it consists simply in verse-making. Many confound the casket of meter and rhyme with the jewel of thought which it encloses, and, perhaps, in some instances, after close investigation, they have found the casket empty and turned away with feelings of disappointment and disgust.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

I just make films that attract me.

Actually, I'm working on a book of poetry.

So the best way to understand poetry, which is made by men, is to imitate, and that goes back to making work as a kind of doorway into new work, as opposed to making work as a mirror of the old work.