Those who have read Ezra Pound's Venice poem know how the city, where the poet died and was buried, becomes an art-object, literally, in their hands and a metaphor for the aesthetic soul. This paper takes a close look at the Venice poem of Pound and that of one of his Indian heirs, Meena Alexander, and shows how the Indian heirs of Pound are far-ranging, though closely following his structural method, while still facing the same conundrums of waking versus dreaming, home versus the world, which makes for exciting poetry, even if without the genius of Pound.

Zorzi (2007), in her compilation of Venice poems, Gondola Signore Gondola, not only includes the usual Venetian Pound ("Paradise isn't artificial"), but also a jewel of a poem by the Indian poet, now residing in New York, Meena Alexander. The subject of both the master and the acolyte is the same, that jewel-box called Venice, but most importantly, she has learnt her method (the Canto method of random inclusion that then makes a crazy kind of sense) from Pound (I have always contended that the method of us, contemporary Indian poets, comes from Anglo-American Modernism rather than from any traditional Indian roots).

Lest we think that Pound hymns the Christian God, he quickly lets us know he is addressing the god in the looping Venetian lagoon who could only be pagan in his lascivious encircling, his power to entice us, and his power to rejuvenate Pound and his tired English Muse.

American Literature Journal, Meena Alexander, Contemporary Indian Poets, Anglo-American Modernism, Traditional Indian Roots, Aesthetic Soul, English Muse, Venetian Lagoon, Structural Method, Postmodernistic Postcolonialism, Cosmopolitanism.