Quotes and anectdotes from the wise to the foolish, and the courageous to the drunk

Ezra Pound Poet

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: Oct 30, 1885
  • Died: Nov 1, 1972

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an expatriate American poet and critic who was a major figure of the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his development of Imagism, a movement derived from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language. His best-known works include Ripostes, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley and the unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos.

Working in London in the early 20th century as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, Pound helped discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway. He was responsible for the 1915 publication of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's Ulysses. Hemingway wrote of him in 1925: "He defends [his friends] when they are attacked, he gets them into magazines and out of jail. ... He introduces them to wealthy women. He gets publishers to take their books. He sits up all night with them when they claim to be dying ... he advances them hospital expenses and dissuades them from suicide."

Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art. religion

The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people. war

A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations. age

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding. education

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

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary. business & men

Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture. poetry

I could I trust starve like a gentleman. It's listed as part of the poetic training, you know. trust