Appreciation …

… GR Sydney Lead — The Poetic Confidence of Robert Frost. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I was … a young man in graduate school, far too concerned about the judgments not only of my teachers but also of my peers to offer risky opinion in public. I recall one agonized evening, however, as I sat trying to decipher a passage from Pound, when suddenly, if privately, I concluded, “I don’t care what the smart people think. I can’t stand anything about this guy!” Pound, I concluded, was not complex; he was complicated, and that distinction struck me as crucial. It does even now.

My problem with Pound has always been that, to my mind, he had a tin ear.