Pounded by Ezra: trite, cliche, and boring; aiming at the object.

"Don’t use such an expression as “dim lands of peace.” It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol." - Ezra Pound

I recently stumbled across Ezra Pound's concise treatise on what you shouldn't do in poetry, A few don'ts by an Imagiste. If you write poetry here, or on any platform it is well worth the five minute read. Ezra is probably the greatest contributer to modern poetry and "was famous for the generosity with which he advanced the work of such major contemporaries as W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H. D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and especially T. S. Eliot." Poetry.com.

This is a brief commentary on selected portions from "A few don'ts by an Imagiste."

I've selected this first portion regarding language, and pasted at the top. Ezra talks about "expression[s] as "dim lands of peace." He states that lines like this "dulls the image."

If we look at a line like, "dim lands of peace," what is the main image that is attempting to be conveyed? Dim, means lacking light, or reduced light. Maybe a sunset or a sunrise, and all the connotations that comes along with that. "Lands," generally makes me think of sweeping farmland. Like miles and miles of expansive earth against the sky; like the great plateau, or steppe that Mongolians feared and loved before sweeping south and west to conquer the world. "Of peace," is what I believe Ezra's biggest complaint. The 'peace' part cheapens the whole setup of "dim lands" with a general broad blanket term that adds nothing to the concrete image of "dim lands." Even "lands" is a bit vague as it isn't specific enough and a general term with wide ranging possibilities.

Ezra says it best in his line immediately after: "It mixes an abstraction with the concrete."

If you've seen my comments on poetry, on steemit, I rail against abstraction. University taught me through Pound that abstraction should be avoided at all costs. A writer should deal in the image, in the concrete, in the "thing" itself, and that "navel gazing (where you look at your internal emotions and dialogue is boring)" should be shunned. Most poetry we see on this platform is 'navel gazing' abstraction and boring. Boring because readers are lazy and unwilling to unpack confusing abstract trite concepts with no relation to themselves. Do you know why I laughed so hard at Hera Lindsay Bird's Keats is dead so fuck me from behind" line "Finger me slowly / In the snowscape of your childhood?" Because it is such a fucking awesome image! The "snowscape of your childhood" line is a little obscure on its own, but in the context of the poem it fits well. I burst out laughing when I heard it for the first time read aloud by the author on the Scottish Poetry Podcast at the gym. People must have thought I was insane cackling to myself. The line, "dim lands of peace" are so similar to the poetry I see here on this platform; and that is okay if you're journalling to yourself! But if you're going to write poetry for the masses, for public consumption take guidance from Hera Lindsay Bird, and Ezra Pound and craft language with images and concepts so pure, so immediate and instantaneous specific that if you were to translate it to another language the image would remain!

"Finger me slowly," produces a vivid image in any woman or man with sexual experience. Perhaps the idiom, "finger me" may not pass translation, but in english it produces a raw visceral image, and the combination of "in the snowscape of your childhood" for me means like getting naughty at your old grade school as an adult. Like when you go back to visit on a weekend and the classrooms are empty. you bring your boyfriend with you, and in a moment of excitement you fuck on your third grade teacher's desk but you have to remove your snow pants and heavy coat because it is winter. These are images that evoke expansive thoughts and connections each reader brings themselves primed by the writer's language.

Ezra continues with an apt explanation about why abstraction, and the inclusion of "of peace" ruins the concrete image, "It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol."

So often as writers, and more pronounced in poetry, we want to stylize the image more than the cheap simplistic words that they are. We dress up images in superfluous adjectives to lend abstraction to them in the hope that it will deepen the meanings. Dim lands "of peace" is trite. It is so broad and unclear that the reader glosses over it as meaningless, and then forgets. Ezra says that the writer does not realize that the image itself is adequate enough! We Don't need to expound beyond the "natural object" (things like red apples, oranges soft with rot, or orange marmalade jam with flecks of rind amid the jelatin). We do not need to add qualifiers to our images to lend them meaning; they stand on their own!

Our goal as poets should be to find those images that act like bricks lifting our complicated thoughts and commentary on the merits of their combined symbolic images; raw, in your face and immediate.

I found this from a post by Geekorner and his poem, "Poem (A Poem)"

Sacred are the tears,
cherished is the flame.
The man has been forgotten.

I want to pick out the symbols, the images, which are the concrete items then list the abstractions that, in my opinion, and I believe Ezra's should be removed.

Images: first line, "tears." Second line, "cherished flame." (could switch to "the cherished flame" to be clearer"). Third line, "the man."

Abstractions: first line, "sacred." Second line, "cherished," though, with rewording would serve as a vivid image. Third line, "been forgotten."

Each on first reading are like the "dim lands of peace" to me. They are vague, obscure, abstract. I believe that Ezra would suggest that these concepts: "sacred tears, cherished flames, and forgotten men," are all in themselves great ideas, but how can we craft our language to show them in the way we want meaning to be expressed. Just telling the reader that the tears are sacred, or that the flame is cherished does nothing profound. It doesn't change the reader like, "Tell me what you love when you think I’m not listening"; although I would even say that "what you love" is abstract sorta.

This poetry stuff is hard! Revision, obsession, and perfection through paring, trimming, rewording, and agonizing over language requires effort and struggle. I worry that I'm not capable of that aggressive adherence to the same poem. Instead I vomit out poetry daily flexing habit; but at the expense of spewing mediocre. My hope is that this in depth study of Ezra Pound, in what I'm calling, "Pounded by Ezra" will help me, and you, dear reader and fellow poet to improve our crafts with the deliberate care and attention greatness deserves.

My image laden attempt for today:

Ezra Pound's picture looks like a crumbling saltine cracker with a moss beard
and wild stuck-my-finger-in-an-outlet hair standing like my eyeballs water from too much wasabi.
I wonder if his scowl is from pushing poetry at a public more concerned with the Kaiser's aggression,
than reading about "red wheelbarrows."
Instead of masturbating to his clawed fist, I'll finger the keyboard.