Pound described poetry as original research in language, and just as formal experiment in poetry has to try things and has to go too far, so does experiment with writing about politics in poetry and what the politics of poetry is.

A movement got started for common schools, and by the end of the 19th century, 91 percent of Americans could read and write.

The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too

The record of poetry in the 20th century isn't all that great anyway. Most of the poets who weren't fascists were Stalinists.

A word is elegy to what it signifies.

I suppose there's something to be said for the sheer reinforcement of our beliefs, but really I think poetry is more useful as disenchantment than enchantment.

If you read three books a day you couldn't read all the poetry that's being published.