Reading them through consecutively, at one sitting (four hours) Pound's
'faults' as a poet all center around his rancor against the malignant
stupidity of a generation which polluted our rivers and would then,
brightly, give ten or twenty or any imaginable number of millions of
dollars as a fund toward the perpetuation of *Beauty* -- in the form of a
bequest to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[...]

    We have, examining the work, successes  --great ones--  the first
molds  --clear cut, never turgid, not following the heated
trivial--  staying cold, 'classical' but swift with a movement of thought.
    It stands out from almost all other verse by a faceted quality that is
not muzzy, painty, wet. It is a dry, clean use of words. Yet look at the
words. They are themselves not dead. They have not been violated by
'thinking'. They have been used willingly by thought.
   Imagistic use has entirely passed out of them, there is almost no use of
simile, no allegory  --the word has been used in its plain sense to
represent a thing--   remaining thus loose in its context  --not
gummy--  (when at its best)  --an objective unit in the design--  but alive.

-- WCW, Excerpts from A Critical Sketch (1931)