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352 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
reviewer to ignore Pound's achievements in England. Frost could
easily have corrected the error by a letter to the Boston Transcript,
but he did not, and he remained silent when Current Opinion gave
the story wider circulation.
The scene now changes to Washington, in 1950. I had stopped
in at the Library of Congress to visit with Elizabeth Bishop, only
to find that usually demure lady out of sorts.
"Don't tell me that Washington is getting you down," I joshed.
"It isn't Washington so much as it is poets," said Elizabeth.
"The awfullest thing has happened. You know, Robert Frost has
been down here to make some records of his poetry for the Library,
and I merely said to him yesterday, 'Well, I suppose you'll be
going out to the hospital to see Ezra.' He went into a furious
tirade, and kept saying what a terrible person Ezra is, and that
he doesn't want anything to do with him, and so on. I never saw
him in such a temper."
"Oh well, that's typical of Frost, isn't it?" I said. "I don't know
him, but I've heard he has quite a temper."
"It certainly left a bad taste with me," replied Elizabeth. "You
know about him and Ezra, don't you?"
"No, I never heard Ezra mention him," I answered.
"Why, Ezra was the one who got him started, years ago in
England," said Elizabeth. "That's why I got so upset about it."
At that time, I knew nothing of Pound's efforts in launching
Eliot, Joyce and many others. Neither he nor his wife ever
mentioned that they had gotten them started. I could understand
why Elizabeth, with her strict moral code, was horrified by Frost's
rudeness. She must have been very surprised when the news reached
her in South America that Frost had been given credit for
effecting Pound's release.
The most generous pronouncement on Frost's talent that has any
relation to reality was made by Edmund Wilson in The New
Republic, June 30, 1926. He said, "Robert Frost has a thin but
authentic vein of poetic sensibility, but I find him excessively dull,
and he certainly writes very poor verse. He is, in my opinion, the
most generally over-rated of all this group of poets." 6
Since 1926, the "authentic vein of poetic sensibility" has gotten
noticeably thinner, and the verse is duller than ever. Perhaps this