BIOGRAPHY: Dorothy Shakespear

Before Pound had ever met Yeats, he was acquainted with Olivia Shakespear and her daughter Dorothy. On one occasion Pound was asked to read from a manuscript of his poetry. Dorothy described him in this way: "At first he was shy - he spoke quickly (with a strong, odd, accent, half American, half Irish) he sat back in his chair; but afterwards he suddenly dropped down, cross-legged, with his back to the fire: then he began to talk - He talked of Yeats, as one of the twenty of the world who have added to the World's poetical matter - He read a short piece of Yeats, in a voice dropping with emotion, in a voice like Yeat's own - He spoke of his interest in all the Arts, in that he might find things of use in them for his own - which is the Hightest of them all. 'Have you seen things in a crystal?' I asked - And he looked at me, smiling, & answered 'I see things without a crystal'" (Longenbach 12).

Pound and Dorothy eventually fell in love and were married. Yeats wrote to Pound saying, "You will have a beautiful & clever wife & that is what few men get." Dorothy was quite active in Yeats's and Pound's literary circle. Dorothy attended G. R. S. Mead's lectures and read his books. She offered suggestions for Pound's work and designed covers for him. Some of her art work, predominately cubist, even appeared in an issue of Blast.