Here's a quote from _Basil Bunting on Poetry_ ed Peter makin (John Hopkins
UP 1999), from Lecture 10 'Precursors':

I hope I have indicated what I think the main character of English poetry
has been and what can be a foundation for its future. I have tried to show
the persistent beat of English verse derived from Old English, and, from
the same source, the tendency to alliteration: the close union of poetry
and music in Wyat and Campion: the vast array of forms and ornaments
Spenser introduced: Wordsworth's insistence on realism, which dictates his
reform of diction and at least some of his narrative virtuosity: and the
way Whitman discovered of holding verse together without a rigid or
repetitive pattern.

And indeed, that's what the previous 9 lectures have done. At this point
he's going to say a bit more about what was wrong with most of the 19th C
poets, & then get on to the 20th. And that's where I am right now.   (105)

In Lecture 1 he makes this point:

        Poetry and music are both patterns of sound drawn on a background
of time. That's their origin, and their essence. Whatever else they may
become, whatever purpose they may sometimes serve, is secondary. They _can_
do without it, in case of necessity. Whatever refinements and subtleties
they may introduce, if they lose touch with altogether with the simplicity
of the dance, with the motions of the human body and the sounds natural to
a man [sic; yes, he's of that old school] exerting himself, people will no
longer feel them as music and poetry. They will respond to them (as
meaning), no doubt, but not with the exhilaration that dancing brings. They
will not think of them as human concerns, they will find them tedious.
        I think that is what happened to poetry a good deal in the last
century: a lot of Victorian poetry, a lot of the poetry contemporary with
it in France, (and) other countries, lost touch with music, and with the
simplicity of bodily movement, and became merely a rather puzzling way of
setting down facts on the page, whereas it rally has no fundamental
connection with facts at all.  (4)


Of course, Bunting's is a personal, and many would say, eccentric take on
the history of English poetry, but it's enjoyable, & a lot of the time when
I'm reading I do want that rhythm: It dont mean a thing if it aint got that
swing.

Doug

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

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