Ezra Pound Quotes

A poem is no place for an idea.

Poetry is the scholar's art.

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.

It's not easy to define poetry.

Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.

We recognise in the finished art, which is the result of these conditions, the best words in the best order - poetry; and to put this essential poetry into different classes is impossible.

As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.

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

There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.

I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force.

A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.

My own verse is usually free verse. The freer the better.

Very nice couplet, although there are dull stretches.

So poetry, which is in Oxford made An art, in London only is a trade.

Without poetry our science will appear incomplete, and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.

Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented.

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

Poetry is the honey of all flowers, the quintessence of all sciences, the marrow of wit, and the very phrase of angels.

Willmott, the English essayist, says poetry is the natural religion of literature.

All poetry is experimental poetry.

Poetry is a kind of ingenious nonsense.

What is poetry? The suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.

I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.

I began to write what I called 'rhythms' ie unrhymed pieces with no formal metrical scheme where the rhythm was created by a kind if inner chant... Later I was told I was writing 'free verse' or Vers libre.