ABSTRACT
Mr. Pound's verses look so extraordinary, dappled with French, Provencal, Spanish, Italian, Latin and Old English, with proper names that we shirk pronouncing, with crudity, violence and obscurity, with stiff rhythms and no rhythms at all, that we are tempted to think that they are the expression or at least the mask of an extraordinary man. It is a relief to us to turn from all but meaningless suavity and skill to something that appears to be individual. And doubtless no ordinary man could or would write like Mr. Pound. But having allowed the turbulent opacity of his peculiarities to sink down we believe that we see very nearly nothing at all. Thus in a poem on Piere Vidal, the fool who 'ran mad as a wolf because of his love . . . and how men hunted him with dogs', we find nothing which we cannot ourselves feel with the help of the introductory note in prose. The verses show us only such things as the writer's effort to imagine what it would be like to be a wolf: God! how the swiftest hind's blood spurted hot Over the sharpened teeth and purpling lips.
