"THE GUITAR'S ALRIGHT, JOHN, BUT YOU'LL NEVER MAKE A LIVING OUT OF IT." AUNT MIMI TO JOHN LENNON

From Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

By Ezra Pound

MR. NIXON

In the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht

Mr. Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer

Dangers of delay. “Consider

”Carefully the reviewer.

“I was as poor as you are;

“When I began I got, of course,

“Advance on royalties, fifty at first,” said Mr. Nixon,

“Follow me, and take a column,

“Even if you have to work free.

“Butter reviewers. From fifty to three hundred

“I rose in eighteen months;

“The hardest nut I had to crack

“Was Dr. Dundas.

“I never mentioned a man but with the view

“Of selling my own works.

“The tip’s a good one, as for literature

“It gives no man a sinecure.”

And no one knows, at sight a masterpiece.

And give up verse, my boy,

There’s nothing in it.”

Likewise a friend of Bloughram’s once advised me:

Don’t kick against the pricks,

Accept opinion. The “Nineties” tried your game

And died, there’s nothing in it.

Beneath the sagging roof

The stylist has taken shelter,

Unpaid, uncelebrated,

At last from the world’s welter

Nature receives him,

With a placid and uneducated mistress

He exercises his talents

And the soil meets his distress.

The haven from sophistications and contentions

Leaks through its thatch;

He offers succulent cooking;

The door has a creaking latch.