You, a Brainworker?

Here's an unusual perspective on the makings of our current economic crisis, by someone who is a poet--and former hedge fund "brainworker". Her name is Katy Lederer:

Me, a brainworker toiling in pristine white hallways.

Abnormal, aboriginal, endemic to this site.

Some people sell their wares outside.

In the pulsating light of Times Square they are singing.

In their noses and nipples, the glinting of rings.

Let us call them unoriginal.

Let us call them all these awful things.

The busy unoriginals are throwing out their trash,

But on this lovely parchment they are writing priceless poems.

They suppose that by such rendering they'll be remembered after death.

They suppose that by such influence their souls will sing eternally.

In the hallways, we are killing time,

Its blood now thick and lurid on the freshly painted walls.

In poems that are both heartfelt and ruthlessly critical of our current financial milieu, in which the fates of individuals are packaged, priced out, and then bundled for sale on the open market, Lederer proves Robert Graves’s famous observation wrong: though there may be no money in poetry, there is indeed poetry in money.

Listen to an interview Katy gave recently on Sea Change Radio. Here is her book. Good stuff.