Italy in the Forties. Mussollini in Rome and Ezra Pound reading his Cantos on facist radio. What are you thinking at this point in time, man? Can you be doing the Goebbels rant on air? Surely you are more subtle than this? Are you feeling the pinch of your ideals here? You poetry speaks of the far reach of interpretation but also the hate you drudge up again and again. Mr. Pound, I am having difficulty confronting your contradictions. You are/were a madman, locked up after the invasion, locked in a cage. Sure they'd execute you, you thought, and you would've been, had it not been for that one strange intervention.
I'm confronting your image, both of your face and your poetry. Is it mere ideogram or something much more rudimentary? Can we put the cantos on display?
Somewhere you confused yourself, thinking yourself as the ethical tudor of some great liberator, but lost your way. Lost at sea, no periplus to guide you, lost and, at last, wrecked.
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