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date: 16 May 2025

Ezra Pound 1885–1972
American poet 

  1. Winter is icummen in,
    Lhude sing Goddamm,
    Raineth drop and staineth slop,
    And how the wind doth ramm!
    Sing: Goddamm.
     
    ‘Ancient Music’ (1917); see Anonymous
  2. With usura hath no man a house of good stone
    each block cut smooth and well fitting.
     
    Cantos (1954) no. 45
  3. Tching prayed on the mountain and
    wrote make it new
    on his bath tub.
     
    Cantos (1954) no. 53; see Bible
  4. And even I can remember
    A day when the historians left blanks in their writings,
    I mean for things they didn't know.
     
    Draft of XXX Cantos (1930)
  5. For three years, out of key with his time,
    He strove to resuscitate the dead art
    Of poetry; to maintain ‘the sublime’
    In the old sense. Wrong from the start.
     
    Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) ‘E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulcre’ pt. 1
  6. The age demanded an image
    Of its accelerated grimace.
     
    Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) ‘E. P. Ode…’ pt. 2
  7. Died some, pro patria,
    non ‘dulce’ non ‘et decor’…
    walked eye-deep in hell
    believing in old men's lies, the unbelieving
    came home, home to a lie.
     
    Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) ‘E. P. Ode…’ pt. 4; see Horace
  8. There died a myriad,
    And of the best, among them,
    For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
    For a botched civilization.
     
    Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) ‘E. P. Ode…’ pt. 5
  9. The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
    Petals on a wet, black bough.
     
    ‘In a Station of the Metro’ (1916)
  10. Pull down thy vanity.
     
    Pisan Cantos (1948) no. 81
  11. Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
    The ABC of Reading (1934) ‘Warning’
  12. Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.
    The ABC of Reading (1934)
  13. One of the pleasures of middle age is to find out that one was right, and that one was much righter than one knew at say 17 or 23.
    ABC of Reading (1934)
  14. Literature is news that stays news.
    The ABC of Reading (1934) ch. 2
  15. Real education must ultimately be limited to one who insists on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.
    The ABC of Reading (1934) ch. 8
  16. Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists.
    Literary Essays (1954)
  17. Poetry must be as well written as prose.
    letter to Harriet Monroe, January 1915