Who coined the modernist motto 'Make It New'?

• A. Ezra Pound
• B. Gertrude Stein
• C. T.S. Eliot
• D. John Dos Passos

Answer: (A)

The idea being tested is the push to renew poetry by breaking with old styles and making language feel fresh and immediate. Ezra Pound is the figure most closely tied to this motto. He used “Make It New” as a rallying cry for poets to rethink form, diction, and subject matter, shedding Victorian and Romantic ornament in favor of concise, precise imagery and new ways of seeing the modern world. This stance was central to Pound’s Imagist circles and to his broader program for modern poetry, helping to define the movement’s spirit and influence many of his contemporaries.

While Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, and John Dos Passos were all important modernists in their own right, they are not the ones who originated the phrase. Stein explored language and perception in experimental ways, Eliot wrote about tradition and fragmentation, and Dos Passos developed innovative narrative techniques; but the motto itself is attributed to Pound and his call to continually renew poetic language.