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EZRA POUND 179
really at his best in the penumbra of speech; where his reader is
left just a little uncertain what the poet really meant to say and yet
cannot help feeling that something rather beautiful has been
said." 32
In his later years, Aldington has busied himself with slashing
attacks upon the writers whom he knew in his youth. He has
written opprobrious biographies of Norman Douglas, D. H. Lawrence,
T. E. Lawrence, and others. He can best be disposed of by
remarking that as a critic he compares with Robert Graves.
In The Saturday Review of Literature, of January 19, 1935, John
Crowe Ransom complained that he thought the Cantos were "missing
the effect of poetry." Perhaps he should have qualified this by
saying that the Cantos miss the effect of the poetry that he was
accustomed to reading.
The New York Times carried a favorable review of A Draft of
XXX Cantos by Roa Lou Walton, April 2, 1933. The critic said,
in part, "Pound is a superb technician, perhaps the most important
modern prosodist. He has contributed much to modern poetry by
his many studies in rhythm. He has taught Eliot his technique. He
has taught MacLeish a great deal about speech in poetry."
William Carlos Williams has made contradictory statements
about the Cantos. He was quite impressed by the early ones, but
has withdrawn somewhat from the development of the technique
used in the later Cantos. He made an interesting comment on
Pound in a letter to Kay Boyle, in 1932: "I don't think he has
solved anything for us. His line is classic adaptation, no more." 33
Ezra did not go unnoticed in the United States during his Rapallo
years. The Literary Digest occasionally mentioned him. A photograph
in the March 20, 1926 issue is entitled "An International
Radical Literary Trio". The radicals are Ford, agape, on the left, a
bored Joyce in the center, and a fierce Pound.
The Literary Digest quoted Pound in the January 14, 1928
issue as follows: "There will be no literate or educated party in
American politics in our time; neither Mr. Sandburg nor I, nor
even Mr. Ben Hecht, is like to invade the halls of Congress nor
lead anyone over the barricades."
Yet we have lived to see Robert Frost's birthday commemorated