Introduction Letters Late Spring (1920-1938) Midway (1939-1963) Revival (1964-1985) Glossary of Names
Alex Niven is Lecturer in English Literature at Newcastle University and his books include Folk Opposition (2011) and New Model Island (2019).
Bunting was an extraordinary letter writer... Niven has gathered an
important collection... Nothing is wasted and he is always
careful... The selection bears witness not only to modern poetry's
principal issues from the point of view of a very acute and
opinionated observer, but also takes us away from the arts
bureaucrats and into that heroic world of small publishers and
hard-pressed editors without which there would be no poetry in the
first place. * Robert Colls, New Statesman *
Letters of Basil Bunting is the essential record of everything that
made the masterpiece of Briggflatts possible. * David Wheatey,
Literary Review *
What a pleasure to read these letters...In a variety of registers,
from the high-minded to the demotic, the letters consider (literary
material aside) travel, food, restaurants, waiters ("the true glory
of Paris"), incarceration, elevators in New York, marriage and war
Niven's editorship is tactful and unobtrusive. The letters are
allowed to sing their own songs, whether plaintive, joyous,
droll... * Julian Stannard, The Critic *
The academic and poet Alex Niven - one of the UK's rather more
interesting younger cultural critics - now adds to [Bunting's]
history with a selected edition of Basil Bunting's letters...In
both Bunting's letters and the poetry there are years of billowing
nothing. But what is there is remarkable and certainly deserves to
be added to the alt. Eng. Lit. canon... What is truly notable here
is the correspondence with Ezra Pound - and later with fellow poet
Louis Zukofsky. * Ian Sansom, Spectator *
An exemplary collection and a gold-standard example of how to put
together a volume of letters; the amount of work which has gone
into what is a major work of scholarship (as well as being
incredibly readable) is, frankly, epic... Bunting is a fascinating
correspondent and Niven is to be applauded for bringing these
letters to a wider audience. * , Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings *
I stopped everything and read them all. The letters are even more
fascinating than I imagined. An important contribution to Bunting's
legacy but also sheds a fascinating light on all sorts of things,
especially Pound. * Lee Hall, writer of Billy Elliott *
This well-judged selection of Bunting's fascinating letters takes
us on a lively tour of twentieth-century poetry, conducting us from
the high modernism of the 1920s and 1930s to the British Poetry
Revival half a century later. In his comprehensive introduction and
intelligent editing, Alex Niven proves himself the ideal guide to
the career of one of our most important modern poets. * Rebecca
Beasley, Professor of Modernist Studies, University of Oxford,
author of Ezra Pound and the Visual Culture of Modernism *
Basil Bunting-poet, journalist, sailor, soldier, diplomat, spy-was
for much of his life a "struggler in the desert" (Ezra Pound's
phrase) on the margins of the English literary scene. This
expansive and beautifully edited selection of Bunting's
correspondence follows Bunting around the world, from
Northumberland to London, Paris, Italy, the Canaries, Iran, the
United States, and points between. The letters-cantankerous,
thoughtful, exasperated, eloquent-are rich with literary,
historical, and personal insights whose value goes far beyond their
commentary on Bunting's own magnificent poetry. * Mark Scroggins,
Professor of English at Florida Atlantic University, author of The
Poem of a Life: A Biography of Louis Zukofsky, and editor of Upper
Limit Music: The Writing of Louis Zukofsky *
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