Ezra Pound undertakes 
     a 20th Century peace vision quest.
 Another Don Quixote,
     he treks from Hell to Purgatory to Heaven 
     in a modern odyssey to end all wars.
He hopes to rebuild civilization 
out of the Great War rubble 
by writing 	epic poetry, 
Confucian philosophy, 
economics and art     
in multi-languages and cultures
that time travels
and turns between imagism, 
ideograms, vorticism and visions, 
across world literature, 
troubadour history 
and into a utopia of fine art.

A lifelong serial poem, 
Los Cantos connects the east with the west, 
gathers up the riches of each.  
The journey gets stuck in Hell,       
   songs shoot bullets 
   at bankers for funding wars 
   to make rich men richer.
Pound fingers culprits, 
blames them for war,  
embraces Fascism 
and antisemitism,  
   all while these poems celebrate
   art, love songs and poetry, 
   he enters Purgatory
while off at a distance
   Peace beckons from Paradise. 

Los Cantos poems shift time,
sift out golden ideograms.
They offer versions of salvation:
with Confucious and Dao	from the East,
in Homer and Ovid		from the West,
with pinches of ancient Greek wisdom 
leavened by French troubadour love ballads,  
with Dante's Songs of Heaven and Hell,
and Malatesta's El Tempio of Art & Poetry.  
The Pisan Cantos, written on death row in Italy,
glimpse Heaven in past glories,
in lyrical beauty, songs steer toward peace.   

From the time Pound was a young artist, 
      he believed that poetry and art 
      can heal and bring peace 
      to a war blasted world.
Where does this lunacy get him? 
17 years in St. Elizabeth's insane asylum.
WWII comes anyway, more wars follow.
In the final song fragments of Los Cantos, 
     Pound lives in Hell.