Our university email here has been out of action for several days owing to
the love bug, so I resume this discussion rather late. I also think Bunting
a better poet (I would say *even* better than Hill.) The comparisons are
interesting, though. They are my two favourite English (I mean coming from
England) poets of the C20, and both seem to me to have one poem (I always
think of Mercian Hymns as a poem) that stands out from the rest, concerned
with history, autobiography and national / regional identity. Personally I
think Bunting shook off his Poundian mannerisms only just in time, and the
bits of Briggflatts I find least convincing are the most Poundian ones, the
invective against the turdbakers and the panegyric on Scarlatti. I hate
Pound in cultural dictator mode.
Best wishes
Matthew Francis
[mailto:[log in to unmask]
01443 482856
-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas Barbour [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 04 May 2000 15:09
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Bunting and Hill
Dominic Fox's points about Bunting & Hill are fascinating. I like Hill,
most especially for Mercian Hymns, but am much more taken by all of Bunting
than all of Hill, & consider Briggflatts to be one of the major British
poems of the century. Bunting actually worked for Pound, studied with him,
so to speak, & would see himself as a modernist writer in what is now
called the Pound tradition, I think, although with his own, very
specifically british bias. I can see Hill as taking on aspects of that
tradition, but his religiosity in many poems seems to undercut it, & I
think Dominic's take on Hill's "An Apology For The Revival Of Christian
Architecture In
England" -- 'that queer and only occasionally lovely meditation on the
etiolation of the national mythos. ("Queer" because it's so difficult to
distinguish the poems' warping-of-nostalgia from the poems'
warped-nostalgia)' -- brilliantly catches some of the problems of Hill's
other poetry.
For me, for rereading for deep pleasure, it's Bunting, much more than Hill.
I wonder if that might be partly a North American thing...
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Springtime's wide
water-
yield
but the field
will return
Lorine Niedecker
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|