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354 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
Very likable. For Ezra, I got hold of Thurman Arnold, also
likable and a far-left Democrat.
"I just got the two of them together on the phone. In fact, there
were only three people of any importance in the case: Rogers,
Arnold, and Dr. Overholser. They freed Pound. I haven't seen
Ezra since 1915. I was off speaking someplace the day he got
out. But he was his old self, and got up a costume for his court
appearance. They tell me he wore a flapping old black hat on his
head and a yellow scarf on his neck . . . But we are all glad
Ezra is out. It was just a thing of magnanimity."
As Frost luxuriates in the sensation of great magnanimity, we
can only marvel at his gall in terming Pound, the critic who first
drew attention to his work, a "self-boomer". His frequent references
to "Ezra", a man he has not spoken to for forty-three years,
suggest a familiarity that exists only in his own mind. If it is true
that Attorney General Rogers informed Frost that "there were no
particular reasons for keeping Ezra any more," one can hardly
believe that it was "magnanimity" to keep him in prison. Why
was he being held, and why was the name Frost the "Open
Sesame" that unlocked the grim doors of St. Elizabeths?
Frost began his request for Pound's release with the amazing
statement, "I am here to register my admiration for a government
that can rouse in conscience to a case like this." 7
His statement
was not very complimentary to Pound, but he was full of
admiration for the government that had kept the poet in prison
for thirteen years without a trial.
Notwithstanding Frost's jokes about "magnanimity", the administration
was forced to bow to the great pressure for Pound's
release that was being generated here and abroad. It was a surrender,
and there was nothing magnanimous about it, just as
there had been nothing magnanimous about the death cage in
Pisa, the violence of Howard Hall, and the quieter hell of Chestnut
Ward. Frost was a government poet, who was called in by the
government as a face-saving gesture. Congressman Burdick's
demand that Pound be freed was the first move by an American
politician to help him, but the government knew that more
politicians might speak up, now that Burdick had done it and
survived.