Best Conference Ever

In my reading, I learn that in 1911, Ezra Pound went to Germany to ask Ford Maddox Ford for an opinion on his new book of poetry:

"He recalls the incident in his obituary for Ford. Ford, writes Pound, 'felt the errors of the contemporary style to the point of rolling (physically, and if you look at it as mere superficial snob, ridiculously) on the floor . . . ' The roll 'saved me at least two years, perhaps more. It sent me back to my own proper effort, namely, toward using the living tongue . . .'"

A week later, another take on the same event:

"Ford saw that it would not do. The Incense, the Angles, elicited an ultimate kinesthetic demonstration. By way of emphasizing their hopelessness he threw headlong his considerable frame and rolled on the floor. 'That roll,' Pound would one day assert, 'saved me three years.'" (Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era)