Ezra Pound and Me

I was looking up one of my very favorite poems, "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound:

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals, on a wet, black bough."

Then I found an incredible essay written by the poet himself! It explains so well the way I see the world! (See my last post for proof.)

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

"Since the beginning of bad writing, writers have used images as ornaments. The point of Imagism is that it does not use images as ornaments. The image is itself the speech. The image is the word beyond formulated language."

"[Quoting a Japanese hokku:]

'The fallen blossom flies back to its branch:
A butterfly.' "

"The 'one image poem' is a form of super-position, that is to say, it is one idea set on top of another... In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective."