I think Sam thinks the poem has an antisemitic subtext, but ultimately I can't agree. Why should the subjects of money, capitalism, lending, borrowing, interest, etc., immediately suggest that Jews are involved, as opposed to a world full of bankers and capitalists of every religious and ethnic background? In fact, I think the reader who immediately associates this world with Jews is perhaps bringing his or her own pejoratives associations into the poem. There really ought to be a way to talk and write about banking without being thought to be talking and writing about Jews in particular.
Also, I'm not really seeing Jorie's poem as being a direct attack on banking or usury the way Pound's was. To me the poem suggests that money lending is the world that is too much with us in Wordsworth, and she is contrasting it with values that do not shape-shift. There is something slippery and mysterious and abstract about money, isn't there, even though it is one of the basic forces that shape our lives?
Finally, I think we come to Pound with full knowledge that he was a raving antisemite, a fact that no doubt accurately colors our reading of the word "usura" when we read that particular canto. Perhaps I have missed something, but I'm not aware of any suggestion that Jorie Graham, whose mother was a Jewish sculptor from Brooklyn and who has had countless Jewish students in her classes and workshops (including me, I should disclose) has any antisemitic inclinations. I do hope that this comment doesn't result in my learning that she has ever before in her 60+ years on earth been accused of such a prejudice.
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