[New-Poetry] Basil Bunting

[Jeff Newberry]

Cris--

I agree.  The more I've read his work, the more I like it.  A few people
posted some psuedo-insults on the list, but I'm not deterred.

Did Keith Tuma edit the volume that you mention?

Best,
Jeff

On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 4:24 PM, cris cheek <cheekc at muohio.edu> wrote:

> Bunting IS in the best available anthology for 20th Century British & Irish
> Poetry, the Oxford; alongside several other poets that ought to be more
> widely discussed i the US . . . Brian Coffey, WS Graham, Lyn Robert . . .
> go Jeff
>
> Bunting's ear is a fine one
>
> cris
>
>
> On Feb 2, 2009, at 11:11 AM, Jeff Newberry wrote:
>
> I've been reading Keith Tuma's *By Obstinate Isles:  Modern and Postmodern
> British Poetry and American Readers* and his *Anthology of
> Twentieth-Century British & Irish Poetry* for my comprehensive
> examinations.
>
> I wanted to start a conversation about a few poets that I've been reading,
> poets who've not been on my radar until I started reading for my exams.  So,
> forgive me if some of my questions of observations seem elementary or
> self-evident.
>
> By far, one of the most fascinating poets I've come across is Basil
> Bunting, a name I'd never heard, despite my undergraduate and graduate years
> as an English major.  I like *Briggflats* quite a lot, though I'm still
> grappling with the poem.  Bunting's lines with their heavy stresses and
> Anglo-saxon vocabulary remind me of Pound's translation of "The Seafarer."
> The poem itself is a Modernist epic (I think), so I think of Eliot and Pound
> immediately.
>
> But Bunting's concern with a particular place contrasts with Eliot's more
> "universal" (not quite the right word, I know--maybe "far-reaching?")
> concerns.  Bunting seems concerned primarily with this place (his place?):
> Northumbria.  The poem burrows down into the landscape, carving itself into
> the land, not unlike the mason carving stone in the poem's opening lines.
> Despite his concern with landscape, however, Bunting can't help bringing in
> a dose of mythology in a later part of the poem.  Indeed, the poem moves
> through seasons, cyclically, depending primarily on recieved notions--such
> as Spring being a time of rebirth and so on.
>
> So, I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on Bunting?  And why on earth is
> he so ignored?  He doesn't appear (a colleague tells me--I've not checked)
> in the Norton Anthology of British Literature.  Perhaps he's not ignored;
> perhaps I've just missed him.  Nonetheless, I thought I'd try to open up a
> conversation about a poet who really has my ear right now.
>
> Best,
> Jeff Newberry
>
> --
>
> <ATT00001.txt>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
>


-- 
You cannot tell people what to do, you can only tell them parables; and that
is what art really is, particular stories of particular people and
experience, from which each according to his own immediate and peculiar
needs may drawn his own conclusion. --W.H. Auden
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20090206/e986c8fd/attachment.html