If there is one word which provides the clue to the life-work of Ezra Pound, it is "productivity." To him, man was essentially a productive animal, and if one thinks of Pound's aestheticism in this light, it ceases to be an escape from life, as in the case of previous Ivory Tower aestheticism. On the contrary, the life of the ordinary worker is subsumed under that of the artist. Even animals and insects are for Pound essentially artists….

Everything that helped production was good; everything that hindered production was bad. That was Pound's simple creed, and it informed all his work as an artist, as an economist and as an impresario of the arts. His aim was not merely production but productivity; i.e. a multifarious busy activity, continually branching out in an open-ended way. Not for him the finished product, with its air of completion and perfection...