10 More Great Quotes About Poets, Poetry, and Writing by Ezra Pound

~ Paul Szlosek

378

“Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.”

“Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance… poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.”

“Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.”

“Poetry must be as well written as prose.”

“Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.”

“Install me in any profession, save this damn’d profession of writing, where one needs one’s brains all the time.”

“No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.”

“Poetry is about as much a ‘criticism of life’ as red-hot iron is a criticism of fire.”

“The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.”

“Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber’s wax dummy is to sculpture.”

—Ezra Pound

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Published by Paul Szlosek

Paul Szlosek was born in Southbridge, Massachusetts, but currently resides in the nearby metropolis of Worcester. He was co-founder and host of the long-running Poet’s Parlor poetry reading in Southbridge and Sturbridge, as well as a past recipient of the Jacob Knight Award for Poetry. His poems have appeared in various local publications including the Worcester Review, Worcester Magazine, Sahara, Concrete Wolf, and Diner. He’s probably best known in the Worcester poetry community for his fanatical obsession with obscure poetry forms, and has invented his own including the ziggurat, the streetbeatina, and (most recently) the hodgenelle.

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