#basil bunting

[smakkabagms]

"To appreciate present conditions collate them with those of antiquity.

Drought, floods, and a dearth. Two fruitless autumns. Empty markets, swarms of beggars. Jewels sold for a handful of rice. Dead stank on the curb, lay so thick on Riverside Drive a car couldnt pass. The pest bred. That winter my fuel was the walls of my own house." Basil Bunting

[mon-nid]

Basil Bunting · The Orotava Road

Basil Bunting · All you, Spanish ladies

[Fotografía anónima en el Valle de La Orotava]

Traducciones de Andrés Sánchez Robayna y Aurelio Major · Cito por la edición de Lumen · 2004

[seekingstars]

On the Fly-Leaf of Pound’s Cantos - Basil Bunting

[davidhudson]

Basil Bunting, March 1, 1900 – April 17, 1985.

[theinwardlight]

Excerpt from the poet Basil Bunting (1900–85) on Briggflatts Friends Meeting House, pictured below, in Cumbria, England. 

[anaxerneas]

Basil Bunting, Complete Poems

[nicethingsthose]

What The Chairman Told Tom

Poetry? It’s a hobby. I run model trains. Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons.

It’s not work. You don’t sweat. Nobody pays for it. You could advertise soap.

Art, that’s opera; or repertory — The Desert Song. Nancy was in the chorus.

But to ask for twelve pounds a week — married, aren’t you? — you’ve got a nerve.

How could I look a bus conductor in the face if I paid you twelve pounds?

Who says it’s poetry, anyhow? My ten year old can do it and rhyme.

I get three thousand and expenses, a car, vouchers, but I’m an accountant.

They do what I tell them, my company. What do you do?

Nasty little words, nasty long words, it’s unhealthy. I want to wash when I meet a poet.

They’re Reds, addicts, all delinquents. What you write is rot.

Mr Hines says so, and he’s a schoolteacher, he ought to know. Go and find work.

- Basil Bunting (1967)

[jshoulson]

Today’s Poem

Coda --Basil Bunting

A strong song tows us, long earsick. Blind, we follow rain slant, spray flick to fields we do not know.

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

Where we are who knows of kings who sup while day fails? Who, swinging his axe to fell kings, guesses where we go?