"Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear"
About this Quote
Efficiency, for Pound, isn’t a sterile virtue; it’s a moral demand. Coming out of the early 20th-century fight against Victorian gush and genteel padding, he treats language like a blade that’s gone dull from overuse. “Accurate” and “clear” are not just stylistic preferences but a disciplinary code: every word must earn its place, and every sentence must land on something real. It’s an aesthetic aimed at stripping writing of its social disguises - the polite vagueness, the ornamental fog that lets ideas dodge responsibility.
The subtext is polemical. Pound isn’t merely advising writers; he’s drawing a line between writers and pretenders. “Good writers” become an elite defined by restraint, by the capacity to refuse the easy dopamine of flourish. This is classic modernist posture: contempt for bloat, impatience with inherited forms, faith that tightened language can tighten thought itself. The phrase “That is to say” reads like a teacher rapping the desk, translating a slogan (“efficient”) into enforceable rules (“accurate,” “clear”). It’s instruction as provocation.
Context matters because Pound’s modernism was obsessed with precision: imagist compression, hard edges, the belief that a poem should deliver an “image” cleanly rather than narrate around it. The irony is that Pound’s own career complicates the sermon. His demand for clarity sits beside a body of work that can be cryptic, allusive, and ideologically disastrous. Which makes the quote feel less like a serene principle and more like a manifesto - aspirational, combative, and haunted by the gap between linguistic discipline and the mess of the mind using it.
The subtext is polemical. Pound isn’t merely advising writers; he’s drawing a line between writers and pretenders. “Good writers” become an elite defined by restraint, by the capacity to refuse the easy dopamine of flourish. This is classic modernist posture: contempt for bloat, impatience with inherited forms, faith that tightened language can tighten thought itself. The phrase “That is to say” reads like a teacher rapping the desk, translating a slogan (“efficient”) into enforceable rules (“accurate,” “clear”). It’s instruction as provocation.
Context matters because Pound’s modernism was obsessed with precision: imagist compression, hard edges, the belief that a poem should deliver an “image” cleanly rather than narrate around it. The irony is that Pound’s own career complicates the sermon. His demand for clarity sits beside a body of work that can be cryptic, allusive, and ideologically disastrous. Which makes the quote feel less like a serene principle and more like a manifesto - aspirational, combative, and haunted by the gap between linguistic discipline and the mess of the mind using it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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