This is Ezra Pound to his friend James Joyce, who was a singer with, by some accounts, the potential for a career as such. On the other hand, all accounts of Pound's voice are pretty well in accord with his own jocular assessment - raucous, nasal, a scratchy phonograph. Recordings bear this out. When we say someone has a beautiful voice we usually mean a speaking or singing organ of great resonance, power, suppleness, freedom, range, capable of an infinitude of nuance, a strangely affecting Gestalt through which we experience a thrill akin to the sensation of flight. But there is another kind of voice than the merely frequency producing one, another kind of singer than the paragon of high notes - certain poets, who, either naturally, or by acquisition, have the ability to compose words which prescribe the voice which should utter them, poets with an “ear,” poets who never separate word from sounding tone and the percussive rhythm of consonants.