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Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.

Ezra Pound

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight.
EZRA POUND

Age Book Growth Man Reason
Poetry is a language pared down to its essentials.
EZRA POUND

Essential Language Poetry
Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.
EZRA POUND

Advertisement Science Soap Way
The primary pigment of poetry is the IMAGE.
EZRA POUND

Image Poetry Primary
One discards rhyme, not because one is incapable of rhyming neat, fleet, sweet, meet, treat, eat, feet but because there are certain emotions or energies which are nor represented by the over-familiar devices or patterns.
EZRA POUND

Device Emotion Energy Familiar Oneself Pattern Represent Rhyme
What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.
EZRA POUND

Heritage Love True Well
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
EZRA POUND

Accurate Clear Goodness Language Writing
Religion I have defined as “Another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art”.
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Art Definition Failure Myself Popular Religion
Until you know who has lent what to whom, you know nothing whatever of politics, you know nothing whatever of history, you know nothing of international wrangles.
EZRA POUND

History International Politics Yourself
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 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
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
A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.
EZRA POUND

Classic Definition Forever Fresh Rule Structure
Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.
EZRA POUND

Accurate Fundamental Moral Oneself Writing
Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.
EZRA POUND

Fight Flag Yourself
The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.
EZRA POUND

Average Failure History Master Work

Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.

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Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.

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