I am blamed for the pardon of [Ezra Hervey] Heywood, convicted in Boston of sending obscene matter through the mails. A man guilty... of circulating, writing, or publishing obscene books--books intended or calculated to corrupt the young--would find no favor with me.... I think the real objection to Heywood's act is ... that he was on the wrong side of the question ... as to marriage.... But it is no crime by the laws of the United States to advocate the abolition of marriage. In this case the writings were objectionable but were not obscene, lascivious, lewd, or corrupting in the criminal sense.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have heard arguments ... in favor of pardoning D. M. Bennett, convicted of sending obscene matter through the mails, viz., a pam...phlet [by Ezra Hervey Heywood] of a polemical character in favor of free love. While I am satisfied that Bennett ought not to have been convicted, I am not satisfied that I ought to undertake to correct the mistakes of the courts--constantly persisted in--by the exercise of the pardoning power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, a th...ing of beauty, a joy forever.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ezra Pound still lives in a village and his world is a kind of village and people keep explaining things when they live in a villa...ge.... I have come not to mind if certain people live in villages and some of my friends still appear to live in villages and a village can be cozy as well as intuitive but must one really keep perpetually explaining and elucidating?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are ... intangible realities which float near us, formless and without words; realities which no one has thought out, and wh...ich are excluded for lack of interpreters.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »