4pQonT

360 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
When it was announced that Pound was to be released, the
manager of Radio Station KART in Jerome, Idaho, offered him
a job as commentator. Had he accepted, this would have been
his first visit to his home state since he departed in the Blizzard of
'88.
Pound was no less controversial because of his release. Frederick
Kuh, chief of the Washington bureau of the Chicago Sun Times,
wrote a feature for the April 11, 1958 issue of that paper about
Pound's planned trip to Italy. Kuh said that the Italian government
did not wish to let him land before the May 25 general elections, as
his appearance might upset the political structure of the entire
nation! No doubt a coup such as Napoleon's return from Elba
was feared.
Kuh noted that Pound had "toed the Axis propaganda line,
denounced his native land and glorified fascism." This upheld
the conventional liberal line that Brooks Adams is fascist propaganda
and that to criticize F. D. Roosevelt is to denounce all that
America stands for. Kuh displayed his usual journalistic accuracy
by commenting that "Pound spent twenty years in Italy before
American troops arrested him in 1943 (sic)."
On learning that Ezra had been freed, I went on safari from
the jungle city of Chicago to the jungle city of Washington, in
order to visit with him again before he departed these inhospitable
shores, where so many had fallen. Meanwhile, he had invaded
Virginia, as the guest of H. R. Meacham. It is an understatement
to say that Pound took Richmond. The Richmond News Leader
published an interview with him on May 1, 1958:
"Shortly after that [his college career] he [Pound] began 40
years as an expatriate in Europe. Why the long exile?
" 'To keep down the overhead,' Pound snapped.
"In Europe he taught a cluster of brilliant young writers. Why?
" 'I suppose it was that I wasn't afraid of them,' he said. 'I
didn't think they could do it better than I could.'
"Pound carried two pairs of glasses in a little canvas bag around
his neck, and as questions came from near or far, he shifted the
glasses to bring the speakers into focus. All this switching lent
considerable motion to the conversation.