Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.
A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.
Ezra Pound
Literature is language charged with meaning.
The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.
There died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old bitch gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization. Charm, smiling at the good mouth, Quick eyes gone under earth's lid, For two gross of broken statues, For a few thousand battered books.
His true Penelope was Flaubert, He fished by obstinate isles.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.
Hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but the one "Sordello."
Better mendacities Than the classics in paraphrase! Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later . . . some in fear, learning love of slaughter; 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.
As for literature It gives no man a sinecure. And no one knows, at sight, a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy, There's nothing in it.
