New England Quarterly, Inc

New England Quarterly, Inc.
What Went Wrong between Robert Frost and Ezra Pound

Author(s): B. J. Sokol
Source: The New England Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Dec., 1976), pp. 521-541
Published by: New England Quarterly, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/364732
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WHAT WENT WRONG BETWEEN ROBERT
FROST AND EZRA POUND
B. J. SOKOL
I
W HEN RobertFrostarrivedin England,friendless,
1912 he had neverbeen published except in a few
in
second-
rateAmerican magazines. At theageofthirty-eight, andwith
fourchildrento support, he had littleto lookforward to in
thepractical world:he hadbeenuncomfortable in
enough his
late-begun careeras a teacherto quit justwhenhe had the
opportunity ofadvancement. His onedreamwastobe a poet,
and moreover a commercially successfulpoetwhocould"do
something" forhisfamily. When he leftEnglandthreeyears
laterFrosthada widerangeofliterary friends,twopublished
books,andan international reputation. He was on thewayto
realizing hisdream and no man had been more helpfultohim
thanEzra Pound.Yet well beforeFrost'sdeparture he and
Poundhada permanent falling-out.
Frost'saccountsofhisyearsin Englandare untrustworthy,
as areall hisownaccounts ofhislife,iftheyaretakenliterally.
He usuallysaidthathejustwalkedin on Poundat io Church
Walk, Kensington wherehe foundhim in an inadequate
portable bathtub. When queriedin 1957,Poundwrotethat
this"birdbath"story was"notimprobable,"' butas Frostat
othertimesstripped grave reverend gentlemen theirunder-
to
wear2and drownedone heroicpublisher in a horsepond"in
hisjocularand fantastic tales, storymaynotbe probable
this
either.The point-andFrostalwayshad a pointin hisyarn-
spinning-isthatFrostwas muchimpressed withPound's
energetic his
youth, physicality, andhis exoticness. Bythetime
FrostmetPoundhe'd no doubtheardplentyaboutPound's
1 Patricia Hutchins, Ezra Pound's Kensington (London, 1965), 70.
2 Lawrance Thompson, Robert Frost: The Early Years
(New York, 1966),
579. All furthercitationsof Thompson I referto this volume.
3 Daniel Smythe,Robert Frost Speaks (New York, 1964), 21.
521
522 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
redoubtablefigureand force,and theirfirst
meetingconfirmed
someofhis fears-andhopes.
Frost'sentranceto the London literaryscene,as faras he
admits,took place on the eveningof January8, 1913. Frost
told ElizabethSergeantand manyothersthathe had simply
happenedacrossthePoetryBookshopin thecourseof a stroll
and was invitedto returnforthepartycelebratingitsopening
thatevening."It was to be a grandgatheringof about three
hundred writersand criticsof all complexions;and there
Frostwas to meet,or at leastsee, manyof the men who were
to become mostimportantto him. There is, however,some
evidence that Frost may have deliberatelydistortedhis de-
scriptionof the partyand how he got there.This possibility
cannotbe ignoredwhenwe realizethatFrostslylyand obses-
sivelyspoiled his biographers'effortsthroughouthis life by
both fictionalizingand misreporting;in fact,Frostonce ad-
mittedto suchan intentionin hiscorrespondence withSidney
Cox, a would-bebiographer:"About fiveyearsago I resolved
to spoil mycorrespondence withyou by throwingit into con-
fusionthe way God threwthe speech of the buildersof the
towerof Babel into confusion."5
The evidencethatFrostdistortedthe circumstances of his
literary debut restson severalinconsistencies.
For one, Frost
told Lawrance Thompson, his officialbiographer,that the
Bookshopopeningtookplace in Kensington,8 whereasit was
at 35 DevonshireStreet(now Boswell Street)near Blooms-
bury.Yet it is unlikelythatFrosthad forgottenthedifference
betweenKensingtonand Bloomsbury, forhe deliberatelytook
advantageof Thompson'svaguenessabout London's geogra-
phywhenhe pulled his leg about one of thedetailsofthefirst
Frost/Poundmeeting,as we shall see later.When talkingto
4 Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant,Robert Frost: The Trial by Existence
(New
York, 196o), ioi.
5 Selected Letters of Robert Frost, Lawrance Thompson, editor (New York,
1964), 435-
6 Thompson I, 407.
ROBERT FROST AND EZRA POUND 523
anothersomewhatless carefulscholar,Louis Mertins,Frost
impliedthathe wasadmittedto theBookshoppartybyticket:7
but thisticket,whichwas autographedand presentedto the
MertinsesfortheircollectionofFrostiana,was mostprobably
one of the ticketsto poetryreadingsat the Bookshopwhich
were bound into the magazinePoetryand Drama, and this
magazinefirstbeganpublicationthreemonthsaftertheopen-
ing of the Bookshop.8Finally,Frostwould not have seen the
Bookshopsettingup on theday of itsopening,as he claimed,
nor would he have had to stumbleon it in its back streetlo-
cation; it "had been servingcustomersfor some little time
beforethe formalopening,and had had some noticesin the
newspapers."9 Moreover,beforetheopeningthePoetryBook-
shop had alreadypublishedwithgreatsuccessand withmuch
public noticethe firstof the famousGeorgianPoetryanthol-
ogies, which gave the shop "splendid advance publicity"'0
whichFrostwould hardlyhave missed.An experiencedand
thereforefrustrated Frostbiographicalworkerrecognizesin
such contradictionand obfuscationthe likelihoodthatFrost
was coveringsomethingup, and I will ventureto guesswhat
thatwas beforegivinghis accountof thepartywhichwas his
literarycoming-out.
My speculations take us back to October, 1912, when Frost
receiveda fatefulletterfromMrs.M. L. Nutt,a Frenchwoman,
who was runningthe publishingfirmof David Nutt. She
agreed to publish Frost'sfirstbook of poetry,A Boy's Will,
and to payFrostroyalties, although,shewrote,shewas notyet
"to
ready put drya and cut proposal"" beforehim.The com-
plicatedrelationsbetweenFrostand Mrs.Nuttare thesubject
7Louis and Esther Mertins, The Intervals of Robert Frost (Berkeley and
Los Angeles, 1947), 27.
8 The descriptionwhich confirmsthis is found in Mertins,The Intervals...,
41.
9Joy R. Grant,Harold Monro and the PoetryBookshop (London, 1967), 63-
10 Grant,Harold Monro ..., 94.
11Selected Letters of Robert Frost,55.
foranother article,* but it is appropriate now to touch on the
question of what might have led her to accept a manuscript
of poems froman unknown and unpublished American who,
according to his later claims, just wandered into her office.In
another discussion I intend to show that Frost might have
had good and shrewd reasons for approaching the firm of
David Nutt; now I'll just suggest that Mrs. Nutt, who was
overworked and inexperienced, might well have handed
Frost's manuscript over to a reader. I guessed the identityof
that reader and later learned that Frost himself hinted at the
same possible identityon at least two occasions.'2 It is quite
possible that the reader was John Drinkwater,a poet who was
added to the David Nutt list after Mrs. Nutt became head of
the firmat the death in 1910 of her husband Alfred. If Drink-
water, a poet of Mrs. Nutt's choosing, had been influential in
her decision to publish Frost, an entirely new possibility is
opened in the question of how Frost got his start in literary
London. It was John Drinkwater who gave the poetryreading
at the opening partyof the PoetryBookshop. Moreover, Drink-
water was a good friend of Harold Monro who ran the Book-
shop, and of Lascelles Abercrombie, and Wilfred Gibson, the
very men whom Frost was to side with, draw support from,
and even live with when literaryLondon was schismatized,as
it was soon to be, into the factionsof Georgians and Imagists.
The notion that Frost made all these important connections
through Drinkwater is perhaps too neat to be true, but the
possibility certainly remains that Frost was invited to the
reading and partyby Drinkwater. Since John Drinkwater was
modest to the point of being self-effacing,-3the fact that he
* B.
J. Sokol, "The Publication of Robert Frost's First Books" will soon
appear in The Book Collector.
12 One hint was
reported to me by Peter Davison, a poet and friend of
Frost's, and another is reported in Robert Francis, Robert Frost: A Time to
Talk (London, 1973), 33. On the other hand, in 1950 Frost wrote to his friend
and apologist,Louis Untermeyer,"I never even knew who read for Mrs. David
Nutt," which is reprintedin The Lettersof Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer,
Louis Untermeyer,editor (New York, 1963), 356.
13Frank Swinnerton,Background with Chorus
(London, 1950), 209, con-
firmsthis; it is more stronglyconfirmedin Drinkwater'sautobiography Dis-
covery(London, 1932), see especially 20o8,213, 234.
never claimed credit14 for launching a soon-to-be-eminent
prot6g6proves nothing.
In any event, Frost was sittingon the stairs,by his account,
listening to Drinkwater's reading and surveying the literary
lights at the party when his shoes were noticed by Frank
Stewart Flint, a minor poet, who thereby pronounced that
Frost was an American. Flint told Frost that he ought to meet
Ezra Pound, his countryman,who had already begun to cut
his dazzling swath across London. Flint eventually arranged
for Pound to send Frost an invitation, a curt one in the form
of his card inscribed "At home-sometimes,"and more than a
month after that, in March, Frost finally paid his visit to
Pound.15
Never missing a chance to pretend to insouciance or in-
nocence concerning his career, Frost told Miss Sergeant that
he just happened to find himself in Kensington one day near
a "Church Walk" sign.'6 Thus, he said, he called on Pound.
This is even more unlikely than that Frost just happened on
the Poetry Bookshop in dingy Boswell Street, for Church
Walk is an alley leading offa narrow back street. It is in a
neighborhood farfromthe British Museum and the surround-
ing bookshops and teashops which drew Frost away from the
modest cottage he had rented in suburban Beaconsfield. The
timing of his arrival in Kensington is also more then a little
suspicious. The firstcopies ofA Boy's Will were just ready. Yet
Frost denied that he brought a copy to show Pound; he told
Thompson that Pound firstchided him for not having come
around sooner, then immediately insisted that they go to-
gether to collect the firstcopy of Frost's book. So, Frost told
Thompson, they set offon "the brief trip over to the office
of David Nutt."17 This again sets Bloomsbury (Nutt's office
was hard by the British Museum) and Kensington in impos-
14 It is not mentionedin
Discovery,nor, accordingto Drinkwater'sdaughter,
Mrs. Penelope Self,in the unpublished manuscriptof his autobiographywhich
takes up the storyfromDiscoveryin 1913.
15Thompson I, 407, 410.
16Sergeant,10o2.
17Thompson I, 41o.
sible proximity.In the versiontold to Miss Sergeant,Frost
added thatPound grabbedthefirst copyofthebook and Frost
"had to walk back to his lodgingswith him holding my
book." 18
That walk acrossLondon would have takenmore thanan
hour in each direction,yetFrosttold the storyas if thisfirst
meetingwithPound was too shortformuch talk,and Pound
was briefofspeechto thepointofdiscourtesy. Thus Frostsaid
Pound ignoredhim to read the book, laughed once saying
affectedly,"You don't mind OUR likingthis,"and thendis-
missedhimwiththeincredibleline,"I guessyou'd betterrun
along home.I'm goingto reviewyourbook."19
Too manyclues in the detailsof the storymake it difficult
to believethatthisis how themeetinghappened.They imply
the toneheard in a recordedinterviewin the BBC sound ar-
chivesin whichFrost,whenhe was lyingabout havingfarmed
in England,loweredthe pitchof his voice to almosta growl,
and drawledoutrageously. Frostalso once explainedabout a
falsestatement he made to SidneyCox: "I supposeI hoped he
mightsee I wanted to be contradicted.'20 The evidentcon-
tradictioncalled for here is the likely assertionthat Frost
deliberatelywentto Pound, bringinghis treasuredbook,was
delightedwhenPound agreedto reviewit,and left,havingbe-
gun a warm,even a "romantic"(as he said to Miss Sergeant)21
attachment to Pound.
What reallyhappenedwas thatPound took Frostaround
socially,showingthe townto him,and him to the town.This
resultedin excitingintroductions to famouswritersincluding
May Sinclair, Ford Madox Ford, and especiallyYeats. Frost
at
metYeats his dimlylit, open-houseMondaynights,where
candlesand closedcurtainsaccompaniedmusingson the land
offaerie.Frostdid notmakea hit in thiscircle,as we see from
18Sergeant,102.
19Sergeant,102.
21Sergeant,
103.
a letter to his friend Edward Davison on the occasion of his
re-meetingYeats during his firstreturn trip to England in
1928: "[Yeats] was the best I ever saw him and quite seemed
to see me in the room." 22But despite the egotism Frost sensed
in Yeats, he was delighted to meet the great poet and grateful
to Pound for having been a guide and a supporter in literary
London.
Ironically, however, it was just because of Pound's enthu-
siastic support that Frost and Pound had their firstfalling-
out. It should be made clear that this was not because Frost
was a puritan about publicity and its methods. John Drink-
water probably told him the amusing tale of how Rupert
Brooke arranged to have the Prime Minister's car wait "out-
side Bumpus's shop in Oxford Street at opening time on the
date of publication" of the subsequently sold-out Georgian
Poetry anthology.23Such strategiesdid not shock Frost; in fact
he wrylyadmired them. He acknowledged the power of pub-
licitywhen, in September, 1913, he wrote a friend,concerning
the verypopular poet Alfred Noyes: "His attractivemanners
and his press agents have given you an exaggerated idea of his
importance."24 And in April, 1913, just aftermeeting Pound,
Frost wrote another correspondent concerning his own book,
A Boy's Will:
Such a workisn't sold in bookstores,but throughthe noticesin
newspapersentirely.It is going the roundsnow and it remainsto
be seen whetherit will fall flat or not.... But dear dear. The
boom is not startedyet.25
To this we might add that both the reviews that appeared in

April, the month of the publication of A Boy's Will, were not
at all the sort to satisfyFrost's desire for "booming": in fact,
both were of two sentences' length and both were servingsof
22
Unpublished letter dated Oct. 11, 1928, in Dartmouth College Library.
23The storyis in Drinkwater,Discovery,229-230.
24Selected Letters of Robert Frost, 93.
25 Selected Lettersof Robert Frost,70-71.
the tired stockphrases and hedging thatwere standard in brief
reviews of poetry in those days.26Yet when Ezra Pound wrote
the firstserious review of Frost,an approving review in many
ways-Frost was incensed and could only contain for a few
months his desire to split with Pound.
Pound's firstreview of A Boy's Will appeared in the new
American magazine, Poetry, in May, 1913 (No. 11,72-74). It
made two main points. The firstwas political: that Frost's
talenthad been criminallyscorned by editorsuntil Frost at last
escaped from the American cultural desert. The second was
aesthetic: that Frost was a backwoods, even a barnyard poet,
to be praised mainly forsimplicityand directness.Frost knew
very well that Pound was wrong, and perhaps deliberately
wrong,on both points. They were points that could have, and
indeed did do him harm in the public arena, but more im-
portant grated his most sensitive nerve, his poet's pride. Yet
it took an aesthetic reevaluation and an emotional upheaval
before Frost had the nerve to break with the useful Pound.
But before turning to that essential issue, a discussion of the
public or socio-literaryaspect of Frost's and Pound's conflict
over this review has its own interest.
Frost often said that the aspect of Pound's Poetry review
which made him furious and made his wife weep was Pound's
revealing and dramatic distortionof some private confidences
concerning a legacy in Frost's family,which Pound used as
one of his truculent proofs of American philistinism. Frost
willingly told far more poisonous stories about his grand-
father and great-uncle to later biographers than Pound's
muddled report,but doubtless Robert and Elinor Frost were
deeply upset by the publication of their private affairs.This
was the firstof many times that Frost's devil of verbal indis-
cretion came back to haunt him in print,yet he never learned
to restrainhimself but only to distrustand even hate writers
26These were The Athenceumfor April 5, 1913, and the T. L. S. for
April
1o, 1913. The standard of contemporarypoetry reviewingwas treated by Ed-
ward Thomas in Poetryand Drama, II, 37 (March, 1914), and is also treatedin
Grant,33.
who took an interestin him. It is certain that Pound reported
Frost's tone accurately: the problem was that Pound over-
simplified the point Frost had made about having been de-
rided for being a poet by his practical Yankee familyand its
symbolismof being ignored by his practical nation.
Pound's simplification of Frost's feelings about being an
unread poet is indicated by the fact that he picked out one
poem as a favoritein A Boy's Will-he quoted it in his Poetry
review and it was the one he supposedly laughed over during
his firstmeeting with Frost. This poem, "In Neglect," is a
slim epigram expressing a defiant indifferenceabout being
ignored by the crowd. As such it was hardly Frost's last word
on the subject of public exposure, a major theme in A Boy's
Will. In fact, the point of the poem is completely over-
shadowed by Frost's volte-facein "Revelation" ("But oh, the
agitated heart/Till someone really find us out"), and even
more by Frost's complex metaphorical statement on the
artist'sposition in "The Tuft of Flowers." But for Pound the
epigram must have strucksquarely home, forhe believed that
serious artistsare inevitably ignored, and like the speaker of
the epigram, he even seemed to take some joy or humorous
comfortin being unpopular. C. K. Stead implied that Pound's
belief in the vanity of popularity was in grim response to his
own lack of recognition,27 but that does not go far enough to
explain the paradoxical nature of Pound's simultaneous scorn
forthe public and skill in mobilizing forcesof publicity. Frost
was caught exactly in the crux of that paradox. On the one
hand, he must have been extremelygratefulfor Pound's help,
for he was aware that to be noticed at all he needed a great
deal of help; on the other hand, he felt quite differentlyfrom
Pound about the proper goals of a professionalpoet. Thus he
wrote to his close friend John Bartlett in November, 1913:
... thereis a kind of successcalled "of esteem"and it buttersno
parsnips.It meansa successwiththecriticalfewwho are supposed
to know.But reallyto arrivewhereI can standon mylegsas a poet
27 C. K. Stead, The New Poetic (London, 1964), 56.
and nothing else I must get outside that circle to the general
readerwho buysbooks in theirthousands.I maynot be able to do
that.I believe in doing it-don't you doubt me there.I want to be
a poet forall sortsand kinds.I could nevermake a meritof being
caviare [sic] to the crowd the way my quasi-friendPound does.28
In this differencewas the ripe seed of conflict,for Pound

used his review of Frost as an opportunity to strike a blow
against the mass orientation of the American editors and, by
implication, against the American "booboisie" to whom they
purveyed. And Frost did not like that at all. To the American
editor, Thomas Mosher, Frost wrote that the Poetry review
was "vulgar,"29 but to John Bartlett he franklycomplained
that editors are "better not offended."30Because the storyof
that review and its consequences is molded around a whole
cultural nexus, it deserves consideration in some detail.
To see how Pound feltabout Poetry magazine fromthe be-
ginning, we only have to read the firstsentences of his letter
agreeing to be their European agent:
and yourschemeas faras I understandit seemsnot
I am interested,
onlysound, but theonlypossiblemethod.There is no othermaga-
zine in Americawhichis not an insult to the seriousartistand to
the dignityof his art."'
Accepting thiscommission in August, 1912, Pound set to work

immediately to uphold the exclusive preeminence he had
written of. The paradoxes of Ezra Pound are numerous: he
was not particularly selfish,but he had a highly developed
competitive instinct,and he really did set out to prove that
all other magazines were inferiorto the one he worked on. So
he was delighted to have a "scoop" (that was his word) in
having discovered Robert Frost, and he crowed to Harriet
Monroe, "I found the man by accident and I think I've about
28Selected Lettersof Robert Frost,98.
29Selected Lettersof Robert Frost,84.
31 The Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941, D. D. Paige, editor (New York,
1950), 9-
theonlycopyofthebook thathas lefttheshop."32 In thesame
letterhe wenton towrite,"someofthereviewers hereare sure
to makefussenoughto getquoted in N. Y." Pound's policyis
clear: to get a noticein Poetrybeforeone could possiblyget
intoanyotherAmericanperiodical,so thatthelittlemagazine
fromChicagocould scoop thebig ones in New York.Pound's
reviewof A Boy's Will appeared in May,whichgave Poetry
thedistinctionofprintingFrost'sfirst Americanreview.Since
it was not Pound's natureto do thingsby halves,he also did
all in his power to make sure thatEnglishreviewerswould
"makea fuss."The resultwas thatmostof thesubsequentre-
viewsofFrost'sbook dutifullyechoedPound's review,making
thesame twopointsthatPound had made to Frost'schagrin.33
Naturally,Pound's firstmotivein helpingFrostwas to en-
couragea poet in whomhe saw "the seeds of grace."34But it
cannotbe denied thatPound pursuedotherends of his own
in theworldofliterary politics.Beyondscoopingotherpapers,
hisPoetryreviewalso trumpetedthesuperiority of theeditors
of Poetryby contrasting themwiththeircompetitors, the in-
sensitive"great American editors" who had long scorned
Frost.As it turnsout,thatwas mostunjust,foran April, 1913
letterfromPound to HarrietMonroe revealsthatFrosthad
previouslyhad poemsturneddownbyPoetry,justas he'd had
by Harpers and The Atlantic Monthly.35But Frost probably
thoughtthatthe reviewwas even worsethan unjust. It was
designedto offendeditorswhomFrosthoped he mighteven-
tuallydepend on fora living.Literarypoliticshave curious
dynamics, however,and Pound'sbatteringofAmericaneditors
did
probably Frostmoregood thanharm.
In brief,thestoryis as follows.Pound's review,in whichhe
said that Frosthad been criminally"scornedby the 'great
32 The Letters of Ezra Pound..., 16.
33 Reviews echoing Pound's include Norman Douglas's in The English
Review, xIv, 505 (June, 1913); F. S. Flint's in Poetry and Drama, I, 250 (June,
1913); and an anonymous column in The Bookman, LXLIV, 198 (Aug., 1913).
34 See The Letters of Ezra Pound ..., 14.
35 The Letters of Ezra Pound...,
1g.
Americaneditors',"and added,"It is theold story,"continued
to create ripples of a mostlyadverse sort in 1915 when Frost
returnedto America.The Secretaryof the PoetrySocietyof
America,forexample,wrote"whya made-in-England reputa-
tion is so coveted by poets of this country,is difficultto
fathom."36 In responseto such publicityFrostmade a public
denial thathe had everbeen scornedor rejectedin America,
and this was printedin the New York Times of August 8,
1915."' The story of the literary skirmishes ensuing when
Frostreturnedto Americawas told in an articleby Robert
Greenberg,but thereis a further backgroundto it whichMr.
Greenberg did not know. In fact,practicallythe verywords
of Frost'scategoricaldenial to the Times werepromptedbya
letterto Frost of July 21, 1915, fromAlfred Harcourt, his edi-
tor at HenryHolt. Harcourtgoes on to write,cynicallyand
truly:
S. . I thinkwe can get anotherround of publicityon thismatter,
and anythingwe can do to keepyournamebeforethepublic...
wouldbe a help.38
So we can see that Frostcould not complainof the scandal-
makingaspectsof Pound's reviewin the long run, and that
his own publicity-seeking methodswere to be no betterthan
Pound's had been.
However,the political or propagandistaspect of Pound's
Poetryreviewof A Boy's Will was not the only part of that
reviewwhichFrostfoundobjectionable.More disturbingto
Frost,at leastin thelongrun,werePound's substantivepoints
concerningFrost'spoetry.To geta perspectiveon that,let us
look at a little-known second reviewof A Boy's Will which
Pound wroteforThe New Freewoman,a feminist paperwhich
was soon to be takenover by the Imagistsand renamedThe
36Quoted in the second volume of the officialFrost biography,Lawrance
Thompson, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph (New York, 1970), 53, from
the New York Times Book Review, May 16, 1915, 198.
37 Quoted in Robert A. Greenberg,"Frost in England, a
Publishing Inci-
dent," NEw ENGLAND QUARTERLY,XXXIV,377 (Sept., 1961).
38 Unpublished letter in Princeton UniversityLibrary.
Egoist.3 As Pound was not makingpolemicsabout neglected
talentin thisreview,he showsmoreclearlythathe had respect,
but limitedrespect,forFrost'sgenius.He offers themoderate
praise that Frost's as
poetryspeaks simply as, but rathermore
soberly than, Walter de la Mare's in his Peacock Pie. He
concludes,usingthesamenoteofpraisingnaiveteas he'd used
in thePoetryreview,thatFrost'sbook gives"a convictionof
poeticpersonality, the feelof some sober local wood god, in-
nocentforthemostpartof our language,halfindifferent and
halfdismayedat our customs."There is a tone of condescen-
sion here,thoughit is not as bad as the "rusticpoet" section
in the Poetryreviewwith its dunghillmetaphors.But it is
bad enoughto haveseverelyupsetFrost,becauseFrost'sdesire
forpublicityand "booming"was onlya superficialone com-
pared withhis deep need to be treatedas an equal by a real
poet.
The arrogantlyjudgmentaltone Ezra Pound oftentook
seemedto promisethatfullpraisewould be metedwherede-
served,but Pound actuallytendedto takea stanceofsuperior-
ity.In a letterto HarrietMonroe,publisherofPoetry,Pound
wrotehigh-handedly of Frost'swork: "I'll pick out whatever
ofhisineditedstuff is fitto print."40No doubtPound feltthat,
having"discovered"Frost,he could make of him a proteg&.
A coupleofbitterverseletterswhichFrostintendedtosend to
Pound make it clear thatPound mistookhis man, but also
make clear whyFrostclung to the shredsof approvalPound
offeredin his reviewsand elsewhere,until the situationwas
too bad forhim to continuedeceivinghimself.These verse
lettersforman exhibitwhichtakesus somewhatcloserto the
heartof the matterbetweenFrostand Pound.
II
Frostfirstmet Pound throughF. S. Flint,and Flint seems
to haveservedas a bridgeand buffer
betweenPound and Frost
during the brief duration of their friendship.Thompson
39 Ezra Pound, "In Metre," The New Freewoman,I, 113 (Sept.,
1913).
40 The Lettersof Ezra Pound ..., 19.
quotes two remarkablelettersconcerningPound that Frost

wroteand sentto Flint.Both werewrittenin July,1913, and
bothwereexamplesof a literarycuriosity, Frost'sattemptsat
vers libre.41Both poems are shockingin theirway,foreach
revealsan aspectof Frost'snaked bitternessnot only against
Pound, but also against himselffor having let himselfbe
takenin by Pound. In the firstof thesediatribes,"Poets are
Born Not Made," Frostsetsout an idea in oppositionto his
title: thata poet can be "made" out of any hack who has a
sufficientlypowerful"father-in-letters."So Frostarguesthata
is
poet anyone called a poet becausehe has thesponsorshipof
an establishedfigurewithenoughliteraryinfluence.Of course
Frost is ironic about this,and the key is the expressionof
brutal and vulgar sexual imagery.There is also a touch of
humorin Frost'sbitterness, wherehe writesof his father(i.e.
Pound) giving birth to married twinsand adds the paren-
theticalcomment,"Don't tryto visualize this." Thompson
interprets thispoemas an expressionof "Frost'sjealousyover
Pound's attentionsto the newlymarriedHilda Doolittleand
Richard Aldington,whose imagistpoems Pound published
and praised in the Egoist."42This may well have been the
case, but Frost'sbad verslibre and his joke about visualizing
implymorethanpersonaljealousyof the pair ofimagists.Be-
foreanalyzingtheparodyaspectof thispoem,however,let us
look at Frost'sother letter-poem.This was apparentlyin-
tendedforPound's reading,but went no furtherthan Flint
becauseof Flint'smollifying suggestionof moderation.43aWe
can easilysee whyin somefragments:
I am a Medeand a Persian
In myacceptance ofharshlawslaid downforme.
WhenyousaidI couldnotread
WhenyousaidI lookedold
WhenyousaidI wasslowofwit
41 These are printed in full in Thompson I, 420 and 421-423-
42 Thompson I,
419-
43a Selected Letters of Robert Frost, 85.
I knewthatyou onlymeant
That you could read
That you looked young
That you were nimbleof wit
I was willing to take anythingyou said fromyou

If I mightbe permittedto hug the illusion
That you liked mypoetry
And liked it forthe rightreason.
You reviewedme
I decided I couldn't use it to impressmyfriends

Much lessmyenemies.
But in as much as it was praise I was grateful
For praiseI do love.
I suspectedthoughthatin praisingme
You werenot concernedso much withmydesert
As withyourpower
That you praisedme arbitrarily
And took creditto yourself
In demonstratingthatyou could thrustanything
upon the world
Were it neverso humble
And bid yourwill avouch it
All I asked was thatyou should hold to one thing

That you consideredme a poet.
That was whyI clung to you
As one clings to a group of insincerefriends
For fear theyshall turn theirthoughtsagainst
him the momenthe is out of hearing.
The truthis I was afraidof you.
The outstanding revelation in this poem is Frost's self-

loathing and his awareness of his desperate lack of self-con-
fidence.This is not so muchan attackon Pound as it is a self-
attackon Frost'sdependenceon Pound, his fawninghope for
sincerepraise,and his terrorat thepossibleabsenceof it.
In his secondparody-poem as in the poem-letter about the
twins, what reallyfrightens Frost is the notion that poetry
can be judged arbitrarily, or on mere partyprinciples.For
Frosthad knownhimselfa poet sincetheage ofeighteen,but
he was desperately lonelyin his knowledge.He also knewthat
he was a poet of a particularkind,and could onlyflourishif
he wrotein his naturalstyle,not in a styleimposedon him.
So Pound did somethingworseto Frostthan disparagehim
whenhe typicallytriedto converthim.
Pound's methodof makingconversionswas editorial: he
wouldteachpoetsimagismbysimplycuttingout their"super-
fluouswords."This he did in truncatingsome quoted lines
withoutso muchas indicatingtheellipsis(he evencapitalized
a mid-lineword,as iftheline werewrittenas he printedit) in
his Poetryreviewof A Boy's Will. As we've seen, therewas
muchtoannoyFrostin Pound'sreview,butthattheseemenda-
tionsparticularly irkedhimis indicatedbyhismentionofone
of the "manglings"in a June, 1913 letterto JohnBartlett.48
It is notdifficultto see whyFrostfeltas he did about Pound's
unasked-for reforms. When asked by Miss Sergeantif Pound
had triedto correcthis verse,Frostdramatizedthe situation:
"Pound ... said,'You've done it in fifty words.I've shortened
it to forty-eight.'
I answered,'And spoiledmymetre,myidiom
and idea.'"44ObviouslyFrostfeltthatPound failedto under-
standhim as a poet,and thusfeltthatPound was not helping
him out of genuinemotives,but ratheras partof an attempt
toreducehimto a pawn.That, ofcourse,would constitutethe
ultimateattackon his individualbonafidesas a poet.
It is verydoubtfulthatthenoveltyof imagismcaused Frost
to fleefromPound's guidance,forFrostwas farfroma stolid
reactionaryin 1913. Indeed in his next book of poems Frost
43 Selected Letters of Robert Frost, 75-
44Sergeant,lo6.
took hold of one of the newestpoetic currentsof the 1910o-
1914 era, when he dramatizedworking-class lives. Frostalso
seemsto have soughtmeetingswithT. E. Hulme, thephiloso-
pher of the imagistset, even afterhe'd lost patience with
Pound.45
To see exactlywhyFrostrejectedthe imagistidea forhis
own poetry,and to see whyhe feltthatits impositionon him
was botha violationand a proofofignoranceofhis particular
value as a poet,willrequirea finerunderstanding ofthediffer-
encesbetweenthe imagistsand Frostthana simpleleft-right
polarityallows. To understandwhat imagismmighthave
meantto Frostwe need to look at some poetictexts,and for-
tunatelysomesuitedto our needsare available.
The firsttextsto be examinedare theverslibrelettersde-
scribedabove. They fitmanyof the imagistcanons.They do
notwastewords.They demandattentionbypresenting(rather
in the Futuristmanner) emotionsnaked, raw, and crude.
They are not good imagistpoems; forone thingtheydo not
containanystriking visualimages(thisis admitted,mockingly,
in the alreadymentionedparentheticalremarkof the first
poem "Don't tryto visualizethis.").They also lack therhyth-
mic subtletiesof the best of Pound or Eliot; theyfulminate
like manyof theCantos,but do notsing.But mostimportant,
theycontainnone of thetensionsbetweensurfaceand deeper
meanings,and none of the active ambiguitiesthat are the
particulargiftand pleasurein Frost'sstyleofwriting.The first
of thesepoemscontainsone or twosmallFrostiantouches,as
in thecontrastbetweenthetitle,"Poetsare Born Not Made,"
and the metaphorof procreationin the poem. The second
parodyis bare of even such slightFrostianindirection,and
readsverymuchlike an expressionof hurtfeelingsby a non-
poet. Frostprovessomethingveryimportantin thesepoems:
thatwithoutthe formalmedium thathe used his workas a
poetwould have been impossible,or at leastof verymuchre-
duced quality.
45 See Selected Letters of Robert Frost, 87.
There is another interestingpiece of evidence concerning
Frost's feelingsabout Pound's imagistpoetry.This is in a copy
of Ripostes which Pound gave to Frost, and in which Frost
wrote comments beside two of Pound's poems.46 The story
behind the book and annotations is easy to guess,forFrost told
Miss Sergeant that in the firsthappy days of his relations with
Pound he was presented with "two little books of his verse,
Personae and Ripostes."47 So it seems Frost's comments on
Pound's poems were probably writtenat the time Pound was
tryingto reform Frost, as a kind of retaliation. Of the two
poems Frost marked up, "Portrait d'une femme," bears com-
ments on almost every line, but the other poem, "Pan is
dead," has only a few comments. Since Frost's corrections to
the firstpoem have been described by Josephine Grieder,48
they need not be discussed in great detail. But I wish to add
to Mrs. Grieder's mild conclusion concerning Frost's com-
ments, that Pound "was evidently never appraised of them,
and theylie in Robert Frost's own libraryas a personal assess-
ment of the literaryeffortsof a valued friend of the time."49
A starting point for understanding how Frost felt about
Pound's verse is in a letterof ca. 1930 fromFrost to his daugh-
ter Leslie, which Mrs. Grieder quotes in her article. Frost
wrote:
One of the firstthingsPound thoughtof was that rhythmand
metremade you use too manywordsand even subsidiaryideas for
thesake of comingout even.... The method[ofcuttingaway un-
necessarywords] gives a very ancient Old-Testament flavor to
expression.5o
48This copy of Ripostes (London, 1912), inscribed "Robert Frost I by I E.
Pound," is in the Fales Library at New York University.It was brought to my
attentionby Dr. Theodore Grieder,Curator.
47Sergeant,105
48Josephine Grieder,"Robert Frost on Ezra Pound, 1913: Manuscript Cor-
rectionsof Portrait D'Une Femme," NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY, XLIV, 301-305
(June, 1971).
49Grieder,304.
50Grieder,3o2n.
One can detectsubtlemockeryin Frost'sfirstsentence,forthe
obvious answerto the problemof "comingout even" is not
excision,but greaterartistry.In the second sentenceFrostis
on to somethingmore interesting. If poetic language is not
made excitingbythetension,or playbetweenictusand stress,
it mustseek excitementin some otherway. For Pound this
otherwayis oftentherhetoricalmethodsthatI would like to
call "talking ancient," and "talking high." Taking these
one at a time,"talkingancient"involvestheuse ofanachronis-
tic vocabularyand locutions,and especiallythe use of sup-
posedlyprimitivecadences. Pound oftenproudlywent far
back in timeforhis poeticmodels,or to exotic culturesand
languages.(Frostlatercruellysaid thatPound soughtoriginal-
ity by "imitatingsomebodythat hadn't been imitatedre-
cently"51). So, two of the comments Frost made beside "Pan is
Dead," "Echo of Keats,"beside (St. 2, 1. 2) and "Echo in line
of Shakes"opposite(St. 3, 1. 1), were intendedas demonstra-
tions that Pound did not keep up the interesting"ancient
Old-Testamentflavor."Frostjustlymade a similarcomment
on a line of "Portraitd'une femme"where he underlined
"and deep" of "In theslow floatof different lightand deep,"
and wrotebeside it "Miltonic." Other echoes in the poem,
such as the Homeric "brightships,"Frostleftunmarkedbe-
cause althoughtheywere not locutionsto whichhe himself
wouldhaveresorted, theywereat leastconsistent withPound's
own principles.
Frostbecame mercilessin his criticismof "Portraitd'une
femme"wherePound lostcontrolof his language,a victimof
his own rhetorical"talkinghigh."In someinstances,Pound's
high talkwas merelyprolix,and in thesecasesFrosttrimmed
"unnecessarywords"with parenthesesor crossingsout. The
resultwas to makesomeof Pound's lines ludicrouslyprosaic,
as with the removalof the last two words (anachronismsas
well as rhymewordsand superfluities) oftheline "And bright
51Quoted in Thompson, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 416. The
remarkdates to 1935-
ships leftyou this or that in fee." And Frostunleashedhis

humorwherePound's high talk swooped batheticallyto the
colloquial, in the lines
Greatmindshavesoughtyou-lackingsomeoneelse.
You havebeensecondalways.Tragical?
No. You preferred it to theusualthing:
and beside thisthirdline, Frostwrote"viz,beingsomebody's
stenographer." In thisinstanceFrostwas not ridiculingwith-
out point,for the kind of rhetoricthatattemptsto capture
imagesfromthe contemporary world by usinga pasticheof
the languageof the age of Romanceruns the riskof making
itselfridiculous.So Frost'scommentspoint out thatPound's
stylewas not at all as bare or spare as it was supposedto be,
and moreover,thatit by natureexcludedhandlingwell con-
temporarysettingsand dramaticsubtletiesthatwere the es-
senceof Frost'spoeticinterest.
This is not to make a blanketcondemnationof Pound's
"educational"methods.F. S. Flintspoiledpoemsbyfollowing
Pound's guidance,52and T. S. Eliot improvedthem. Yeats
was strongenough to take what he needed fromPound and
ignorethe rest;but it is importantto rememberthatat the
timewe are discussing, Frostdid notfeelat all secureas a poet.
So althoughhe was readyfornew ideas about poetry,Frost
quite rightlyshied away fromPound, who rathercrudely
slightedhis naturalgifts.
In all, the warmrelationsof Pound and Frostlasted only
fromtheirfirstmeetingin March, 1913 until the middle of
Julyof thesameyear.Frostwroteto Thomas Mosheron July
17, 1913: "You will be amazed to hear thatPound has taken
to bullyingme.... He says I must write somethingmuch
more like vers libre or he will let me perishof neglect.He
reallythreatens."'53 This aborted friendshiphas been given
52 C. H. Sisson, in English Poetry (London, 1971), 59-60, shows how a fine
poem of Flint's was ruined because of alterationsmade before it was included
in an Imagist anthology.
53Selected Letters of Robert Frost, 84.
so much attentionbecause it showshow Frostreactedto one
ofthemajorpoeticmovements ofhis time.In justicetoPound
we shouldadd, as Frosthimselfdid, thatPound was initially
"quick and kind" in praisingFrost,and thateven afterthey
had quarreled,Pound "continuedgenerous,he reviewedme
justly."54A lasthistoricalremarkshouldbe added. In spiteof
some harsh personal skirmishesthat intervened,Frost was
eventuallyinstrumental in freeingPound fromhis incarcera-
tionin St. Elizabeth'shospital.
Frosthad to go his own road,and even in theinsecurity of
his first in he
year England he knew that meant could not
followPound. To do so would have been a dangernot onlyto
the ego, but to the muse. Sensing this,he used his strong
weapons of humor and indirectionto escape fromPound's
sphereof influence.
54Sergeant,105. Frostwas probably thinkingof Pound's reviewof his second
book, "Modern Georgics,"Poetry,11, 127 (Dec., 1914). In this review Pound
praised Frost'sNorth of Boston, justly,but again flayedAmerican editors.

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What Went Wrong between Robert Frost and Ezra Pound

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To this we might add that both the reviews that appeared in

In this differencewas the ripe seed of conflict,for Pound

Accepting thiscommission in August, 1912, Pound set to work

quotes two remarkablelettersconcerningPound that Frost

I was willing to take anythingyou said fromyou

I decided I couldn't use it to impressmyfriends

All I asked was thatyou should hold to one thing

The outstanding revelation in this poem is Frost's self-

ships leftyou this or that in fee." And Frostunleashedhis

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