The relevance of the English Pound

The application of labor, and how you judge what is worth your labor, is often a decision that is not made available to you. There are reams of verse that I have written that I shall never use which, at the time, I thought they were inseperable from myself. They were me and my thoughts. On a recent trip to Dartmoor, to be taught under the guidance of both John Burnside and Andy Brown, the notebook was ruined. Black ink laid across the page, a spectre of what it was, fading to the lips of the page. I was disapointed with my swelled paper: several years of notes ruined.

The reason why I quoted the poet Ezra Pound as my first entry, and the title of my blog, was because he knew how to phrase truth and what was worth the writer's labor. He always seemed to identify the link between the writer, the work and the message and how they all interlinked and danced in between one another. He knew what should remain true:

What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage

I hope to follow my original passions through this, by writing whenever I am able to. The working life has demulsified my own interests and the things I "lovest well" into disparate objects, flung around my room. It used to be that I had a symbiotic relationship with them, but now they are qualities of a personality which I often claim as my own.

Watch this space.

And so

The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention of true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity

- Ezra Pound