Pound 's editorial choices were based on what he saw as the degree of sympathy that these writers displayed with Imagist precepts , rather than active participation in a group as such . Williams , who was based in the United States , had not participated in any of the discussions of the Eiffel Tower group . However , he and Pound had long been corresponding on the question of the renewal of poetry along similar lines . Ford was included at least partly because of his strong influence on Pound , as the younger poet made the transition from his earlier , Pre @-@ Raphaelite @-@ influenced style towards a harder , more modern way of writing . The inclusion of a poem by Joyce , I Hear an Army , which was sent to Pound by W.B. Yeats , took on a wider importance in the history of literary modernism , as the subsequent correspondence between the two led to the serial publication , at Pound 's behest , of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in The Egoist . Joyce 's poem is not written in free verse , but in rhyming quatrains . However , it strongly reflects Pound 's interest in poems written to be sung to music , such as those by the troubadours and Guido Cavalcanti . The book met with little popular or critical success , at least partly because it had no introduction or commentary to explain what the poets were attempting to do , and a number of copies were returned to the publisher .