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Margin 255pseudonym, Guthrie also published The Legend of Ermengarde, whatSally Gall has described as an “exuberantly indecent poem” inspiredby troubadour poetry (Gall 1980:184). Capouya planned to publishGuthrie’s volume of poems, Graffitti, also recommended byRosenthal, who suggested that Guthrie evaluate Blackburn’stranslation. Perhaps in an effort to pique Guthrie’s interest, or toward off any expectations of academic fidelity to the Provençal texts,Capouya’s letter described Blackburn’s project as “a collection ofadaptations,” not the “anthology” he mentioned to Ciardi. Guthrie,it turned out, was actually the worst possible reader for Blackburn’smanuscript.In the 1920s, his own translations of Provençal texts were cast incurrent English usage with a slight pre-Raphaelite archaism, in dictionand verse form (a rhymed stanza). This is the opening of “Winter-Song,” Guthrie’s translation from Marcabru:Since the withered leaves are shreddedFrom the branches of the trees,Mauled and tousled and beheadedBy the bitter autumn breeze,More I prize the sleety rainThan the summer’s mealy guile,Bearing wantonry and lewdness.(Guthrie 1927a:68)Although Guthrie lived in Paris during the 1920s and was fond ofevoking that modernist cultural moment in his later poetry, the poetryitself reveals him to be more Wordsworthian than Poundian:Montparnassethat I shall never see again, the Montparnasseof Joyce and Pound, Stein, Stella Bowen,little Zadkine, Giacometti […] all gone in any case,and would I might have died, been buried there.(Guthrie 1970:15)By the 1950s, Guthrie had also become an academic, even though helacked a high school diploma and had received the degrees forforeigners offered at the University of Toulouse. And this immersionin academic culture played into his evaluation of Blackburn’smanuscript. His response was substantial and detailed, checking