Pound, Sieber, and Bayes

In 1951, Ron Bayes was a PFC in the Army, and stationed in Iceland. He was worried about the prolonged imprisonment of Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeth's. Though Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, and Archibald MacLeish were the public face of Pound's release, Bayes has always been proud of his less visible involvement. So am I.

And I remember well his story of being utterly floored the first time he read the opening line of the Pisan Cantos-- "The enormous tragedy of the dream in the peasant's bent shoulders."

I said, ‘You’re really the only man of letters in the United States Senate, and you’re Jewish. And you’re probably the only man that could get Pound out.’