Basil Bunting on Poetry (review)

In quirky lectures given at Durham University near the end of his life, Basil Bunting revised the canon. In this collection he elevates poets, beginning with Wyatt, whose rhythms originate in song and dance; and he demotes those for whom meter consists of counting. Amplifying Pound's assertion that poets should compose by the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome, Bunting bewails the moment when poets replaced musicality with the rule of neatness: "If a poet starts counting syllables and heeding the rules prosodists invent, writing verses becomes a pedantic game on a par with crossword puzzles." Although "free verse" has become "bad prose, chopped up," Whitman figures importantly in this canon. The realignment Bunting suggests is thus astonishing but also persuasive.