I was little concerned when opened up to the new section and started in on LXXII because, well, it was in Italian.

Fortunately, Pound had the generosity to repeat the entire Canto in English.

This is a fairly self referential Canto, and not just because Pound writes:

But I will give you a place in a Canto
giving you voice. But if you want to go on fighting
go take some young chap, flaccid & a half-wit
to give him a bit of courage and some brains
to give Italy another hero among so many

It’s also not hard to see Pound, despite a bit of dismissal there, still remaining sympathetic to the WWII Italian (fascist?) cause. And he’s got to get in this little bit of anti-semitism:

Exuded the great usurer Geryon, prototype
of Churchill’s backers. And there came singing

I’m not sure how he reads Geryon as being relevant (I can’t help but think of Anne Carson’s great novel in verse about Geryon, though), but it’s easy to read ‘usurers’ and ‘Churchill’s backers.’

The tone of angry dismissal and disappointment runs throughout, but the sense of loss in Pound’s tone is also ever present.

Part way through, Marinetti enters the dialogue. Of monologue. Pound has a one sided conversation with an absent (and mourned for?) Marinetti, the great (and proto-fascist) futurist poet.