isn’t interesting enough
to be put into poetry it’s not worth saying;
if writing poetry makes life too tough,
you cannot solve your problem writing prose or praying.
If you are not sufficiently inspired
to write a poem, don’t write prose; you have to dare
to write some lines that may not be admired
but prove to all your readers you have got a prayer.
Stefan Collini in the TLS, November 23,2007 (“Wild Man”) reviews A. David Moody’s Ezra Pound: Poet: A portrait of the man and his work:
For Pound poetry was everything, and before quoting any of his all-too-quotable prose pronouncements against him (which is mostly the use they have lent themselves to) , one should recall his declaration to his mother in 1909: “I should never think of prose as anything but a stop-gap, a means of procuring food. Exactly on the same plane with market-gardening. If a thing is not sufficiently interesting to be put into poetry,
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