ABSTRACT
Pound and his wife spent the first three months of 1921 at St Raphael on the Côte d'Azur between Cannes and St Tropez, staying for part of the time at least at the Hotel Terminus. While there he corresponded with Flint on Imagism, maintaining still, though their tone now was more friendly than in 1915, that Flint's work had more in common with impressionism than with his own Imagism which concentrated on hardness and condensation. Of the early days of Imagism he said that it was only by rather overbearing arrogance that he had managed for a few months to coerce the movement into a semblance of unity. It had been justified, he thought, because ‘poetic English’ was dead and Imagism drew attention to the necessity for good writing — compression and greater emotional energy. From St Raphael he also wrote to William Carlos Williams to say that he would consider a lecture tour of the United States if the money involved was sufficient to give him a year of leisure afterwards. With the money guaranteed he would listen to the stern voice of duty and return to save as much of America as was ready to be snatched from the yawning maw of gum shoes and the Y.M.C.A. ‘I went to Newcastle year before last for one lecture — I suppose coming to U.S. would be like doing that for a year???’ His emphasis on the money aspect possibly was caused by the news, received shortly after his arrival in France from London, that The New Age could not continue to pay for regular contributions.
