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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

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
Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.
EZRA POUND

Attention Criticism Pay Work Writing
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.
EZRA POUND

Artist Category Herself Nature Paragraph Serious
What matters most is not the idea, but the capacity to believe in it completely.
EZRA POUND

Believe Capacity Complete Ideas
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
The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.
EZRA POUND

Action Curse Immediate Nation Sort Thinking
It doesn’t matter which leg of your table you make first, so long as the table has four legs and will stand up solidly when you have finished it.
EZRA POUND

Finish Solid Stand Table Yourself
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.
EZRA POUND

Heritage True Well
Poets who are not interested in music are, or become, bad poets.
EZRA POUND

Bad Interest Music Poet
When words cease to cling close to things, kingdoms fall, empires wane and diminish.
EZRA POUND

Close Diminish Empire Word
Use no word that under stress of emotion you could not actually say.
EZRA POUND

Emotion Stress Word Yourself
Seems fairly clear that you fix a breed by LIMITING the amount of alien infiltration. You make a race by homogeneity and by avoiding in breeding, No argument has ever been sprouted against it. You like it in dogs and horses.
EZRA POUND

Argument Avoid Clear Infiltrate Limitation Race Yourself
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.
EZRA POUND

Desire Dust Forever Myself Yourself
The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.
EZRA POUND

Artist Creation Himself Work
Small talk comes from small bones.
EZRA POUND

Body Bone Small Talk
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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