Yes, if you're referring to the essay included in The Cave and the Spring. I read it a while ago and I've just checked it out again. I suppose you could say he misquotes, in that he re-arranges the line-breaks in "Ash Wednesday" in order to question their sheer arbitrariness (as he sees it). But he does warn you that that is what he is doing. I can't find him doing the same thing to Whitman, although he does talk about him (whom he clearly prefers to Eliot - or, at least, dislikes less), but maybe that's in another essay.
It's certainly a questionable essay - and it probably helped to make Hope deeply unfashionable - but it has a certain coherence of its own. It helps you understand why he wrote the kind of poetry he did.
A good name to drop, Ross.
|