As for the first point, here are Mr. Pound's words in answer to the question, "do you agree that the great poet is never emotional?" Yes, absolutely; if by emotion is meant that he is at the mercy of every passing mood.... The only kind of emotion worthy of a poet is the inspirational emotion which energises and strengthens, and which is very remote from the everyday emotion of sloppiness and sentiment.... And as for the platform of Imagism, here are a few of Pound's "Don'ts for Imagists": Pay no attention to the criticisms of men who have never themselves written a notable work. Use no superfluous word and no adjective which does not reveal something. Go in fear of abstractions. Don't retail in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don't imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art of music. Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright or try to conceal it. Consider the definiteness of Dante's presentation as compared with Milton's. Read as much of Wordsworth as does not seem to be unutterably dull. If you want the gist of the matter go to Sappho, Catullus, Villon when he is in the vein, Gautier when he is not too frigid, or if you have not the tongues seek out the leisurely Chaucer. Good prose will do you no harm. There is good discipline to be had by trying to write it. Translation is also good training. The emphasis here is certainly on discipline and form. The Chicago _Tribune_ recognized this as "sound sense," adding: If this is Imagism ... we are for establishing Imagism by constitutional amendment and imprisoning without recourse to ink or paper all "literary" ladies or gents who break any of these canons. But other reviewers were less approving. While the writer in the _Nation_, quoted above, dreads the anarchy impending, Mr. William Archer was terrified at the prospect of hieratic formalisation. Mr. Archer believes in the simple untaught muse: Mr. Pound's commandments tend too much to make of poetry a learned, self-conscious craft, to be cultivated by a guild of adepts, from whose austere laboratories spontaneity and simplicity are excluded.... A great deal of the best poetry in the world has very little technical study behind it.... There are scores and hundreds of people in England who could write this simple metre (i.e. of "A Shropshire Lad") successfully. To be hanged for a cat and drowned for a rat is, perhaps, sufficient exculpation.