black
grey
blue
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The natural object is always the adequate symbol.

Ezra Pound

Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are. Come, my friend, and remember that the rich have butlers and no friends, And we have friends and no butlers.
EZRA POUND

Better Friendship Pity Remember Rich
I found after seventy years that I was not a lunatic but a moron, I should have been able to do better.
EZRA POUND

Better Finding Mental Myself
Technique is the test of sincerity.
EZRA POUND

Sincere Technique Test
Poetry is a language pared down to its essentials.
EZRA POUND

Essential Language Poetry
Poetry must be as well written as prose.
EZRA POUND

Literature Poetry Prose Writing
When words cease to cling close to things, kingdoms fall, empires wane and diminish.
EZRA POUND

Close Diminish Empire Word
With one day’s reading a man may have the key in his hands.
EZRA POUND

Day Hands Key Man Reading
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.
EZRA POUND

Attention Himself Page Popular Reading Secret Writing
In verse one can take any damn constant one likes, one can alliterate, or assone, or rhyme, or quant, or smack, only one MUST leave the other elements irregular.
EZRA POUND

Element Leaving Oneself Regular Rhyme
Good art however ‘immoral’ is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.
EZRA POUND

Art Goodness Immoral Precise True Virtue
The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
EZRA POUND

Artist Craft Interest Live Modern Violence
Poetry is a very complex art, It is an art of pure sound bound in through an art of arbitrary and conventional symbols.
EZRA POUND

Art Bound Convention Poetry Sound Symbol
The serious artist must be as open as nature. Nature does not give all of herself in a paragraph. She is rugged and not set apart into discreet categories.
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Artist Category Herself Nature Paragraph Serious
Bureaucrats are a pox. They are supposed to be necessary. Certain chemicals in the body are supposed to be necessary to life, but cause death the moment they increase beyond a suitable limit.
EZRA POUND

Body Chemicals Death Limitation Moments Necessary
The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.
EZRA POUND

Expression Human Language Sum Wisdom
The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.
EZRA POUND

Average Failure History Master Work

The natural object is always the adequate symbol.

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The natural object is always the adequate symbol.

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