ABC of Reading
Encyclopedia
ABC of Reading is a book by Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

 published in 1934. In it, Pound sets out an approach to the appreciation and understanding of literature (focusing primarily on poetry).
Despite its title the text can be considered as an ABC of Writing Poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

- in which the author does not suffer fools gladly. Several strikingly informative mantra
Mantra
A mantra is a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is considered capable of "creating transformation"...

s are given:

  • "Literature is language charged with meaning: Great literature is simply charged with meaning to the utmost degree" - to be achieved by three main ways:
  1. phanopoeia - throwing the object (fixed or moving) on to the visual imagination.
  2. melopoeia - inducing emotional correlations by sound and rhythm of the speech.
  3. logopoeia
    Logopoeia
    In literary analysis, logopoeia or logopeia refers to the verbal impact of poetic language.Ezra Pound coined the word in 1917 from Greek roots in a review of the poetry of Mina Loy — he defined the term as "the dance of the intellect among words and ideas". Elsewhere he changes intellect to...

    - inducing 1 & 2 by stimulating associations with other word/word groups.

  • "Literature is news that stays news".

  • "Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music."

  • "I've never read half a page of Homer
    Homer
    In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

     without finding melodic invention."

  • "Without the foregoing minimum of poetry in other languages you simply will not know where English poetry comes."

  • "From Chaucer you can learn whatever came over into the earliest English that one can read without a dictionary."

  • "Artists are the antennae of the race."

  • "The honest critic must be content to find a very little contemporary work worth serious attention; but he must be ready to recognize that little..."

  • "There are three types of melopoeia, i.e. verse made to sing; to chant/intone; and to speak. The older one gets the more one believes in the first. One reads prose for the subject matter."


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