Still Valid Advice from Ezra Pound
"Don't use such an expression as "dim lands of peace." It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol."
"Go in fear of abstractions. Do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don't think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably dificult art of good prose by chopping your compostion into line lengths."
----------------Ezra Pound. from "A Retrospect" in Pavannes and Divigations (1918)
posted by RodneyPhillips @ 11:51 AM
2 Comments:
What a good teacher. Where would Eliot be without him? The natural object is always the adequate symbol because it is the simple (well: "simple") idea. It is hard to make art from simple ideas. But that is the whole point.
Interesting !
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