This Difficult Individual Ezra Pound

Despite the fact that many literate persons who occupied subordinate positions in the government read and admired Pound's work, none of them dared to visit him. Even Huntingdon Cairns, who holds a fairly lofty post at the National Gallery, would only risk seeing Pound a few times during the twelve and a half years of his imprisonment in Washington. Consequently, Pound's visitors could be divided into two groups, the youthful and reckless art students, or beatniks, and those admirers of his work who came from other countries and were therefore immune to reprisals by the federal government. This group included scholars and diplomats from almost every country in the world except Russia.