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350 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
on composing new poetry, making new translations, and revising
and editing previous writing."
Surprisingly enough, newspaper accounts of Pound's release
began to give Robert Frost complete credit for the event. Since
Frost had never visited Pound, and was not in court when the
charges were dismissed, this was an odd conclusion, even for
reporters who were accustomed to treat the facts with drunken
abandon. The patient work of many others, such as T. S. Eliot,
who had begun to protest the brutality of Pound's treatment as
long ago as September, 1945, when he was still confined in Pisa,
was ignored by the press.
When Mary McGrory of the Washington Star interviewed Pound
on April 29, 1958, she noted, "He (Pound) was asked about an
old friend, the completely non-political and much venerated poet,
Robert Frost, whose intervention in the case last summer is
largely credited with bringing about his release. . . . 'he ain't
been in much of a harry,' Mr. Pound said dryly."
To those who know nothing of Frost's relationship with Pound,
this may seem like ingratitude. Frost was one of the many poets
whom Pound launched on their careers, and who forever afterward
shuddered with fear that their names might be linked with
his. The fact is that Frost had consistently refused to visit Pound
or to have anything to do with him during the twelve years of his
imprisonment at St. Elizabeths. Frost was not concerned about
Pound's plight, even though Pound had been his first booster.
Frost was in his late thirties when, unable to get his poems
published in the United States, he went to England. His resources
were nearly gone when he met Pound, who, with his characteristic
enthusiasm, at once went to work to make a reputation for him.
After Pound played a key role in Frost's acceptance in England,
Frost returned to the United States, an established poet. He never
referred to the help that Pound had given him.
In his autobiography, John Gould Fletcher says, "One day he
[Pound] spoke to me very highly of Robert Frost, an obscure
New England farmer who, at the age of forty, had come to live
in England . . . At my very next visit to Pound's lodging, as I
recall it, he picked up a typewritten manuscript lying on the table
and proceeded to read it aloud. The title was The Death of a