The Word of a Gentleman his wife Nora are the focus of many chapters (and the book opens with a quotation from Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"); these reflect Niesewand's detention by Desmond Lardner-Burke under P. K. van der Byl and Smith, and his subsequent deportation, leaving behind his wife of three years, Nonie Niesewand (née Fogarty). The Word of a Gentleman The Word of a Gentleman (1981) (later retitled "Undercut") was the third of five novels written by Peter Niesewand, the South African journalist who spent 73 days in solitary confinement for his coverage of Ian Smith's government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
Ballad of the Goodly Fere offensive. Edward Marsh sought permission to reprint "Fere", which Pound denied because he wished to reprint it himself. T. S. Eliot said that "Fere" showed Pound's "great knowledge of the ballad form". William Butler Yeats said that "Fere" "will last". Ambrose Bierce is said to have "consistently disapproved" the poems of a "young poet", until one came to him which impressed him so much he wore "out the paper and the patience of friends by reading it at them", namely "Fere". Ballad of the Goodly Fere The Ballad of the Goodly Fere is a poem by Ezra Pound, first published