"I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later"
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Pound treats criticism as a stimulant rather than a destination. Calling it a preliminary excitement, he frames the critical impulse as a surge of energy that helps a writer clarify confusions, sift influences, and identify what must be done. It belongs to the workshop of the mind, not to the finished gallery. If it remains commentary, it is sterile; if it gets absorbed into the poems and prose that follow, it becomes fertile. The test of criticism is not its cleverness but its transformation into craft.
That stance aligns with his modernist ethic of economy and action. As a leader of Imagism and an advocate of direct treatment of the thing, Pound distrusted abstractions and windy discourse. Criticism should cut away flab and push language toward precision, rhythm, and vivid particulars. He urged writers to make it new, and criticism, for him, was one of the tools for renovation: a means to clear the head so the work can be clear on the page.
His practice supports the theory. Pound was a ferocious editor of others and himself, and his interventions in T. S. Eliots The Waste Land show criticism becoming creation. By pruning, reshaping, and redirecting, he turned evaluative insight into the bones of a poem. The value lay not in the notes exchanged but in the sharpened work that emerged. Likewise, his ABC of Reading and essays are full of prescriptions designed to migrate into lines and stanzas, not to linger as academic positions.
There is also a polemical edge here. Pound implies that a culture of commentary can easily detach from the labor of making. He refuses that detachment. Criticism should be antecedent to writing, a phase that hastens the leap from idea to artifact. When the excitement cools into form, when the writer clears his head in order to clear the page, criticism has done its job and disappears into the achieved work.
That stance aligns with his modernist ethic of economy and action. As a leader of Imagism and an advocate of direct treatment of the thing, Pound distrusted abstractions and windy discourse. Criticism should cut away flab and push language toward precision, rhythm, and vivid particulars. He urged writers to make it new, and criticism, for him, was one of the tools for renovation: a means to clear the head so the work can be clear on the page.
His practice supports the theory. Pound was a ferocious editor of others and himself, and his interventions in T. S. Eliots The Waste Land show criticism becoming creation. By pruning, reshaping, and redirecting, he turned evaluative insight into the bones of a poem. The value lay not in the notes exchanged but in the sharpened work that emerged. Likewise, his ABC of Reading and essays are full of prescriptions designed to migrate into lines and stanzas, not to linger as academic positions.
There is also a polemical edge here. Pound implies that a culture of commentary can easily detach from the labor of making. He refuses that detachment. Criticism should be antecedent to writing, a phase that hastens the leap from idea to artifact. When the excitement cools into form, when the writer clears his head in order to clear the page, criticism has done its job and disappears into the achieved work.
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| Topic | Writing |
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