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I
THE LOFTIEST rise of land in that territorial oddity known as
the District of Columbia is occupied by an insane asylum. I have
not been able to ascertain what humorist in the victorious Federal
Government, immediately following the Civil War, selected this
dominant ground for the site of St. Elizabeths Hospital, so that the
employees of the various departments could look up, as they
emerged from their offices at the close of the day, and see in the
distance the solemn brick buildings of that Valhalla of the government
clerk, the madhouse.
In 1949, I was introduced to the poet Ezra Pound, who was at
that time an inmate of St. Elizabeths Hospital. There had been
conflicting reports as to his mental condition; that is to say, the
reports of the government psychiatrists, and the reports of everyone
else who knew him. The hospital officials avoided the issue by
describing him to prospective visitors quite honestly as a "political
prisoner". In the interests of national security, Pound was being
kept under guard by the Federal Bureau of Health, Education and
Welfare. I also was a ward of the government. My status as a
veteran of the Second World War had won me paid subsistence at
the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Washington.
In those days, the Institute housed the sad remnants of the
"avant-garde" in America. It was inevitable that the name of Ezra
Pound, who for nearly half a century had personified all that was
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