Ezra Pound on Poetic Rhythm and Musicality

Let the candidate fill his mind with the finest cadences he can discover, preferably in a foreign language, so that the meaning of the words may be less likely to divert his attention from the movement; e.g., Saxon charms, Hebridean Folk Songs, the verse of Dante, and the lyrics of Shakespeare—if he can dissociate the vocabulary from the cadence. Let him dissect the lyrics of Goethe coldly into their component sound values, syllables long and short, stressed and unstressed, into vowels and consonants. Let the neophyte know assonance and alliteration, rhyme immediate and delayed, simple and polyphonic, as a musician would expect to know harmony and counterpoint and all the minutiae of his craft. No time is too great to give to these matters or to any one of them, even if the artist seldom has need of them.

Don’t chop your stuff into separate iambs. Don’t make each line stop dead at the end, and then begin every next line with a heave. Let the beginning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you want a definite longish pause.

In short, behave as a musician, a good musician, when dealing with that phase of your art which has exact parallels in music. The same laws govern, and you are bound by no others.

— Ezra Pound, “A Retrospect”

1. Analysis of the Expression: "Don't chop your stuff into..."

• Don't be a slave to the metrical pattern.
• Don't be overly regular.

With this expression, Pound argues that poetry should not be subject to rigid metrical patterns that prevent the realization of what truly matters: the musical movement. Pound advocates for a style of poetry where music is an essential component. He rejects forced divisions or useless stops, favoring a continuous and harmonic poetic movement.

2. Meaning of the Passage: Addressing Young Poets

Pound is explaining a new conception of poetry—the poetry he considers to be "the right one." In his view, the primary focus must be on the musical movement created by the verse. We should not follow restrictive metrical patterns; instead, the poet should work like a musician. The main characteristics of poetry are harmony and fluency.

I believe he is referring to young poets, using these instructions as a corrective example of what they should avoid. They should not feel bound by the antiquated ideas of previous generations. He writes this to teach young poets how to achieve high-quality poetry.

3. The Significance of "Preferably in a Foreign Language"

Because Pound believes the most important element in a poem is the presence of harmonious movement, the poet should not be distracted by the literal meaning of the words. The meaning often distracts the poet from the rhythm. By writing in a foreign language, the poet is forced to focus entirely on the sound and movement, as the meaning of the words becomes secondary or inaccessible, preventing the reader from being distracted by semantics.