Bunting, Basil

Briggflatts

London, England, UK: Fulcrum Press, 1966. Second Edition. Softcover. "Every birth a crime, / every sentence life. / Wiped of mould and mites / would the ball run true? / No hope of going back. Hounds falter and stray, / shame defects the pen. / Love murdered neither bleeds nor stifles / but jogs the draftsman's elbow. / What can he, changed, tell / her, changed, perhaps dead? / Delight dwindles. Blame / stays the same" (Basil Bunting, from "Briggflatts," p. 15). Offered here is the elusive, corrected "Second Edition" (of 1966) of English Modernist poet Basil Bunting's (1900-1985) seminal masterwork, "Briggflatts." Bunting, a famously musical versifier who in his day was consider THE promulgating inheritor of Ezra Pound's concept of "melopoeia" (the "tone leading of the vowels" in poetry), here displays his (now uniquely antiquated) vision for [then-] contemporary English & American prosody. Ginsberg, for example, famously sat Bunting down at a party in England and read him all of HOWL and Kaddish in one setting, to which Bunting replied: "Too many words." While Basil does do an excellent job inheriting the molecular obtuseness and drama of Ezra Pound's sense of vowel music (think EP's "Sestina: Altaforte" & lines like, "With fat boards, bawds, wine and frail music!" there interred), it is decidedly different from the New American Poetic variant; decidedly different than the musics of Kerouac, Frank O'Hara, and other noted masters of vowel-based (as opposed to syllable-based) prosody. The work is excellent and important multifariously, however -- and the musicality it exemplifies forms only one aspect by which (or through which) the curious reader or aspirant scholar might valuate its impact or worth. UK trade-format softcover, published by London's Fulcrum Press: “Second edition entirely reset," per copyright page: presumed first printing, though not enumerated as such thereon. From the collection of scholar, poet and our dear friend Robin Eichele (b. 1941), noted Mimeograph Revolutionary & co-founder (with the late, great John Sinclair [1941-2024]) of the Detroit Artists’ Workshop. In strong near fine condition with only minor-to-moderate rubbing, shelf-wear, light bumping & scattered, light nicks & low-visibility scuffs to front, back covers & spine-edge; light-to-moderate age-toning throughout, otherwise clean. Near Fine. [Item #6424]

Price: $35.00