Ford Madox Ford: An Impressionist on the Page

‘The lobbed ball plops, then dribbles to the cup. . . . / (a birdie Fordie!)” This strange and arresting line begins Robert Lowell’s poem “Ford Madox Ford,” one of the lesser-known examples of the poet’s work. Its oddity however suits that of its subject, perhaps the hardest to pin down of the modernist figures from the last century’s early decades (Yeats, Joyce, even Lowell himself). The author of more than 80 books—novels, poetry, memoirs, art criticism—Ford shrugs off any explanatory category; even his changed name (born Ford Madox Hueffer, in 1873) has a second thought about it. The frequent use of the term Impressionism to characterize his artistic principles does not carry easy definition, just as Lowell’s Impressionist portrait eludes us even as it contains memorable lines and images.