What does pound consider preferable to abstractions?

I don't know if there are any options, but my first guess would be - image. In his early imagist phase, Pound wanted to get rid of abstractions that were nearly the sole focus of the 19th-century romantic poetry. Instead, he aimed for pure visual images as signifiers of the world around us. He preferred simplicity as opposed to complex philosophical concepts. For example, instead of writing about nature as a source of spiritual nourishment (such as the romantic would have done), he wrote a 2-line, free-verse poem about people who are standing in the station of a metro, waiting for their train to arrive, and resembling "petals on a long, wet bough". The whole poem is an image, absolutely devoid of abstractions.

By by showing how hard it was for the sisters to feign grief

The answer is b. new mexico