The Poems of Basil Bunting

The first critical edition of the complete poems of Basil Bunting (1900 – 1985), published on the fiftieth anniversary of his masterpiece, Briggflatts.

Basil Bunting is one of the most important British poets of the twentieth century, admired early on by Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky, and acknowledged since the 1930s as a major figure in the Modernist movement. Faber published a selection of his early work in Pound’sActive Anthology (1933), but Bunting’s reputation was not confirmed until decades later with the publication of his masterpiece, Briggflatts, by Fulcrum Press in 1966.

Bunting’s work was published throughout most of his life in editions from Oxford University Press, Bloodaxe Books, New Directions and various small presses. This is the first critical edition of the complete poems, and offers an accurate text with variants from all printed sources. Don Share annotates Bunting’s often complex and allusive verse, with much illuminating quotation from his prose writings, interviews and correspondence. He also examines Bunting’s sources (including Persian literature and classical mythology), and explores the Northumbrian roots of Bunting’s poetic vocabulary and use of dialect.

This important work of literary scholarship offers, for the first time, an edition commensurate with the achievement of this neglected Modernist master.

(…)

Night, float us.
Offshore wind, shout,
ask the sea
what’s lost, what’s left,
what horn sunk,
what crown adrift.

(Fragment from: Coda by Basil Bunting)

The first critical edition of the complete poems of Basil Bunting, published on the fiftieth anniversary of his masterpiece, Briggflatts. Basil Bunting is one of the most important British poets of the twentieth century, admired early on by Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky, and acknowledged since the 1930s as a major figure in the Modernist movement.

Faber published a selection of his early work in Pound’sActive Anthology (1933), but Bunting’s reputation was not confirmed until decades later with the publication of his masterpiece, Briggflatts, by Fulcrum Press in 1966. Bunting’s work was published throughout most of his life in editions from Oxford University Press, Bloodaxe Books, New Directions and various small presses.

This  first critical edition of the complete poems offers an accurate text with variants from all printed sources. Don Share annotates Bunting’s often complex and allusive verse, with much illuminating quotation from his prose writings, interviews and correspondence. He also examines Bunting’s sources (including Persian literature and classical mythology), and explores the Northumbrian roots of Bunting’s poetic vocabulary and use of dialect.

This important work of literary scholarship offers, for the first time, an edition commensurate with the achievement of this neglected Modernist master.

The Poems of Basil Bunting
Basil Bunting
Hardcover
624 pages
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Main edition (2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 057123500X
ISBN-13: 978-0571235001
£30.00

Books That Everyone Should Read
fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: - Book Stories, Archive A-B, EDITOR'S CHOICE