Lovely dense sensuousness.
Basil Bunting (1900–1985) grew up in Newcastle, England, a northern mining area. He had a Quaker education and was profoundly affected by it. He traveled widely in Iran as a journalist, served in British intelligence during World War II, married twice, and had four children. At the time of his death in 1985 he enjoyed recognition as one of the most important British poets of the 20th century.
Basil Bunting (1900-1985) is one of the most important British poets of the twentieth century. Acknowledged since the 1930s as a major figure in Modernist poetry, first by Pound and Zukofsky, it was not until thirty years later––in 1966––that the Northumbrian master poet published Briggflatts, which Cyril Connolly called “the finest long poem to have been published in England since T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.” In addition to Briggflatts (otherwise unavailable in the U.S.), this new Complete Poems includes Bunting’s other great sonatas, most notably Villon (1925) and The Spoils (1951), along with his two books of Odes, his vividly realized “Overdrafts” (as he called his free translations of Horace, Rudaki, and others), and also his brilliantly condensed Japanese adaptation, Chomei at Toyama (1932). This edition presents the original Collected Poems published earlier by Oxford University Press, with the addition of Bunting’s posthumous Uncollected Poems, and has an introduction by Richard Caddel, Director of the Basil Bunting Poetry Center at Durham University.
Basil Bunting (1900-1985) is one of the most important British poets of the twentieth century. Acknowledged since the 1930s as a major figure in Modernist poetry, first by Pound and Zukofsky, it was not until thirty years later––in 1966––that the Northumbrian master poet published Briggflatts, which Cyril Connolly called “the finest long poem to have been published in England since T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.” In addition to Briggflatts (otherwise unavailable in the U.S.), this new Complete Poems includes Bunting’s other great sonatas, most notably Villon (1925) and The Spoils (1951), along with his two books of Odes, his vividly realized “Overdrafts” (as he called his free translations of Horace, Rudaki, and others), and also his brilliantly condensed Japanese adaptation, Chomei at Toyama (1932). This edition presents the original Collected Poems published earlier by Oxford University Press, with the addition of Bunting’s posthumous Uncollected Poems, and has an introduction by Richard Caddel, Director of the Basil Bunting Poetry Center at Durham University.
Lovely dense sensuousness.
There is verse which is directly melodic, which seems to sing rather than speak. Basil Bunting is a master of this.
