SOURCE: "Of Owls and Waterspouts," in Paideuma: A Journal Devoted to Ezra Pound Scholarship, Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring, 1988, pp. 59-68.

In the following essay, Skinner discusses the respective influences of Ford Madox Ford and Allen Upward on the works of Ezra Pound.

In his stimulating short study of Ezra Pound, Donald Davie devotes considerable attention to the ideas of Allen Upward and their impact upon the evolution of Pound's mature aesthetic.¹ In the following pages, I want to examine two specific points that Davie discusses, and slightly augment the range of reference evoked by them thus far: firstly, Upward's inspection of the Greek word glaukopis, and secondly, his figure of the waterspout or double vortex.

In his habit of intense etymological scrutiny, Upward had, of course, both predecessors and successors, though the habit is rarer, perhaps, than it should be. For Pound himself, "reading" the ideogram, whether or not...