SOURCE: Stock, Noel. “Pound's Style and Method.” In Critics on Ezra Pound: Readings in Literary Criticism, edited by E. San Juan Jr., pp. 89-94. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1972.

In the following essay, originally published in 1964, Stock reviews how writer Ernest Fenollosa and Chinese poetic methods influenced Pound's poetic style and philosophy of writing.

The best and bulk of Pound's literary prose was written before 1920. Whatever shortcomings it may have, it was written by one who was interested not only in what he was writing about, but the literary world in which he was working as well. The later prose, even the best of it, even essays like ‘How to read’, ‘Date Line’ and those on Monro and Housman, lack the freshness of the earlier pieces, despite the chatty and occasionally effective style; but more than that, they are the work of a man who for...