A Few Donts by An Imagiste

A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste

Author(s): Ezra Pound

Source: Poetry, Vol. 1, No. 6 (Mar., 1913), pp. 200-206
Published by: Poetry Foundation
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20569730
Accessed: 04-07-2016 17:48 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Poetry Foundation is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Poetry
This content downloaded from 177.35.78.233 on Mon, 04 Jul 2016 17:48:57 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse

splendidly expressed in some classic (and the school
musters altogether a most formidable erudition).

2. They re-wrote his verses before his eyes, using
about ten words to his fifty.
Even their opponents admit of them-ruefully
"At least they do keep bad poets from writing!"

I found among them an earnestness that is amazing
to one accustomed to the usual London air of poetic

dilettantism. They consider that Art is all science, all
religion, philosophy and metaphysic. It is true that
snobisme may be urged against them; but it is at least
snobisme in its most dynamic form, with a great deal of
sound sense and energy behind it; and they are stricter
with themselves than with any outsider.
F. S. Flint
A FEW DON 'TS BY AN IMAGISTE
An "Image" is that which presents an intellectual

and emotional complex in an instant of time. I use the
term 'complex" rather in the technical sense employed
by the newer psychologists, such as Hart, though we
might not agree absolutely in our application.
It is the presentation of such a "complex" instantane
ously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that
sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that
[ 200 ]
sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the

presence of the greatest works of art.
It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than

to produce voluminous works.
All this, however, some may consider open to debate.
The immediate necessity is to tabulate A LIST OF DONT'S
for those beginning to write verses. But I can not put

all of them into Mosaic negative.
To begin with, consider the three rules recorded
by Mr. Flint, not as dogma-never consider anything as

dogma-but as the result of long contemplation, which,
even if it is some one else's contemplation, may be worth
consideration.
Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have
never themselves written a notable work. Consider the
discrepancies between the actual writing of the Greek
poets and dramatists, and the theories of the Graeco
Roman grammarians, concocted to explain their metres.
LANGUAGE
Use no superflous word, no adjective, which does not

reveal something.
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. Don't retell in mediocre
verse what has already been done in good prose. Don't
think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when
[ 2011
POETRY: A. M a g a z i n e of Ve r s e
you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably
difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition
into line lengths.
What the expert is tired of today the public will be

tired of tomorrow.
Don't imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler

than the art of music, or that you can please the expert
before you have spent at least as much effort on the art
of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the

art of music.
Be influenced by as many great artists as you can,
but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt
outright, or to try to conceal it.
Don't allow "influence" to mean merely that you
mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some
one or two poets whom you happen to admire. A

Turkish war correspondent was recently caught red
handed babbling in his dispatches of "dove-gray" hills,
or else it was "pearl-pale," I can not remember.
Use either no ornament or good ornament.
RHYTHM AND RHYME
Let the candidate fill his mind with the finest cadences
he can discover, preferably in a foreign language so that
the meaning of the words may be less likely to divert

his attention from the movement; e. g., Saxon charms,
[ 202 ]
A Few Don'ts by an Imnagiste

Hebridean Folk Songs, the verse of Dante, and the lyrics
of Shakespeare-if he can dissociate the vocabulary from
the cadence. Let him dissect the lyrics of Goethe
coldly into their component sound values, syllables long
and short, stressed and unstressed, into vowels and
consonants.
It is not necessary that a poem should rely on its

music, but if it does rely on its music that music must be
such as will delight the expert.

Let the neophyte know assonance and alliteration,
rhyme immediate and delayed, simple and polyphonic,
as a musician would expect to know harmony and counter
point and all the minutiae of his craft. No time is too

great to give to these matters or to any one of them, even
if the artist seldom have need of them.

Don't imagine that a thing will "go" in verse julst
because it's too dull to go in prose.
Don't be " viewy"-leave that to the writers of pretty
little philosophic essays. Don't be descriptive; remember
that the painter can describe a landscape much better
than you can, and that he has to know a deal more

about it.
When Shakespeare talks of the "Dawn in russet
mantle clad" he presents something which the painter

does not present. There is in this line of his nothing
that one can call description; he presents.
Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way
of an advertising agent for a new soap.

[ 203 1
POETRY: A Magazine of Verse

The scientist does not expect to be acclaimed as a
great scientist until he has discovered something. He
begins by learning what has been discovered already.
He goes from that point onward. He does not bank

on being a charming fellow personally. He does not
expect his friends to applaud the results of his freshman
class work. Freshmen in poetry are unfortunately not

confined to a definite and recognizable class room. They
are " all over the shop." Is it any wonder "the public
is indifferent to poetry?"
Don't chop your stuff into separate iambs. Don't

make each line stop dead at the end, and then begin
every next line with a heave. Let the beginning of the
next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you
want a definite longish pause.
In short, behave as a musician, a good musician, when
dealing with that phase of your art which has exact

parallels in music. The same laws govern, and you are
bound by no others.
Naturally, your rhythmic structure should not destroy
the shape of your words, or their natural sound, or their
meaning. It is improbable that, at the. start, you will

be able to get a rhythm-structure strong enough to affect
them very much, though you may fall a victim to all

sorts of false stopping due to line ends and caesurae.
The musician can rely on pitch and the volume of
the orchestra. You can not. The term harmony is

misapplied to poetry; it refers to simultaneous sounds of
[2041

different pitch. There is, however, in the best verse a
sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the
hearer and acts more or less as an organ-base. A rhyme

must have in it some slight element of surprise if it is to
give pleasure; it need not be bizarre or curious, but it

must be well used if used at all.
Vide further Vildrac and Duhamel's notes on rhyme
in "Technique Poetique."
That part of your poetry which strikes upon the
imaginative eye of the reader will lose nothing by trans
lation into a foreign tongue; that which appeals to the

ear can reach only those who take it in the original.
Consider the definiteness of Dante's presentation, as
compared with Milton's rhetoric. Read as much of

Wordsworth as does not seem too unutterably dull.
If you want the gist of the matter go to Sappho,

Catullus, Villon, Heine when he is in the vein, Gautier
when he is not too frigid; or, if you have not the tongues,
seek out the leisurely Chaucer. Good prose will do you
no harm, and there is good discipline to be had by trying

to write it.
Translation is likewise good training, if you find that
your original matter "wobbles" when you try to rewrite
it. The meaning of the poem to be translated can not
"wobble."
If you are using a symmetrical form, don't put in

what you want to say and then fill up the remaining
vacuums with slush.
1205 1
POETRY: A AIgagazine of 1erse

Don't mess up the perception of one sense by trying
to define it in terms of another. This is usually only the
result of being too lazy to find the exact word. To this
clause there are possibly exceptions.
the first three simple proscriptions* will throw out
nine-tenths of all the bad poetry now accepted as standard
and classic; and will prevent you from many a crime of
production.
"i. . . Mais d'abord ilfaut etre un poete," as
MM. Duhamel and Vildrac have said at the end of
their little book,"Notes sir la Technique Poetique"; but in
an American one takes that at least for granted, other

wise why does one get born upon that august continent!
Ezra Pound
NOTES
Agnes Lee (Mrs. Otto Freer) who has lived much in

Boston, but is now a resident of Chicago, is known as
the author of various books of poetry, the most rep
resentative, perhaps, being The Border of the Lake,
published about two years ago by Sherman, French & Co.
She has translated Gautier's Emaux et Camees into
English poetry; and has contributed to the magazines.

Her long poem, The Asphodel, which appeared in The
North American Revievw several years ago, attracted
wide attention.
Mr. Edmund Kemper Broadus is a member of the
faculty of the University of Alberta, Canada.

*Noted by Mr. Flint.
] 206 1

A Few Donts by An Imagiste

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Few Donts by An Imagiste

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Few Donts by An Imagiste

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste

Author(s): Ezra Pound

POETRY: A Magazine of Verse

musters altogether a most formidable erudition).

Even their opponents admit of them-ruefully

"At least they do keep bad poets from writing!"

to one accustomed to the usual London air of poetic

with themselves than with any outsider.

An "Image" is that which presents an intellectual