ABC of Reading


ABC of Reading is a book by Ezra Pound published in 1934. In it, Pound sets out an approach by which one may come to appreciate and understand literature.
Despite its title the text can be considered as a guide to writing poetry. The work begins with the "Parable of the sunfish", ends with a collection of English poetry that Pound called Exhibits and along the way contains several mantras:
  1. phanopoeia – throwing the object on to the visual imagination.
  2. melopoeia – inducing emotional correlations by sound and rhythm of the speech.
  3. logopoeia – inducing 1 & 2 by stimulating associations with other word/word groups.