Our Pound of Flesh

Ezra Pound is unquestionably the progenitor of modern American literature and English-speaking poetry. Yet for years there have been elite anthologies whose august lists exclude his name.

For those aware of his influence on writers ranging from Joyce to William Carlos Williams all the way to Ginsberg's 50's "Beatniks" ignoring Pound in a survey of 20th century English-speaking literature is like trying to discuss German expressionism or the score for "Star Wars" without mentioning Wagner. And yet as with the former several have made the attempt.

The reason behind each example is the modern scarlet letter known as "Anti-semitism". Once carelessly displayed by the likes of Wagner and Pound, it was then exploited to justify a second world war and wholesale slaughter. The realization that his bigoted analysis owed less to his incisive intellect than a "shallow suburban mentality" finally led Pound to admit that in speaking of race or "Jewish USURY" he was mistaking a symptom for a cause. "The cause" Pound finally admitted was not unique to race but human "AVARICE."

So it is ironic that while we claim to have recognized the danger of making the artifice of "race" a handy scapegoat for society's ills, we refuse to face the fact that while the bankers are indeed happy to profit from want and war as Pound decried -["people here for that wars never interrupted... the interest of DEBTS": from Cantos LXIX,] we continue to slave and die for their pleasure.

Think of it this way: How is our response to the economic crisis any different from those who blindly trusted Bernie Madoff? Have we demanded to see the books? Are we assured of a return on the earnings from our labor? Do we have more than the bankers' promise that our children will not be saddled with yet more feckless debt?

Testifying before Congress, Neal Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program described the plan as "inherently vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse, including significant issues relating to conflicts of interest facing fund managers, collusion between participants and vulnerabilities to money laundering."

Pound presaged this government "trap" by half a century: "There will certainly be minor purloinments. As long as the socialists used their accessories as red herring to keep man's mind off the creation of money."

The next time we complain about Wall Street's corruption maybe we should think about our sheepish complicity. Truth is we're mostly stuck in this fix because of that "shallow suburban mentality."