A Strong Song Tows Us: The life of Basil Bunting, Britain's greatest modernist poet - Softcover

Richard Burton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908984252 ISBN 13: 9781908984258

Publisher: Infinite Ideas Limited, 2014

Synopsis

Basil Bunting, Britain's greatest modernist poet, led an extraordinary life. He was born in 1900 in a small mining village in Tyneside, where he received a largely Quaker education and, at the age of thirteen, met the love of his life. His young life was hindered after he left school and went straight to prison as a conscientious objector. In the early twenties he worked in Paris as, variously, an artist's model and road mender, before being rescued from another strech in prison by Ezra Pound and Ford Madox Ford. Later the young poet found himself with Pound and W. B. Yeats in Rapallo where he worked on sand boats and wrote the poems that formed the backbone of Pound's influential Active Anthology. Bunting continued to move from place to place for the rest of his life. He and his young family fled their Canary Island home at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, and the breakdown of his marriage saw him take residence on a boat off the south coast of England. During the Second World War he took advantage of his knowledge of classical Persian to work as a translator in Iraq. He later became a spy in the region, culminating in promotion to Vice Consul in Isfahan. His time as The Times Middle East correspondent was cut short when he was thrown out of Iran by Mossadeq in 1953. Briggflatts caught the literary world's attention, but fame brought him no relief from grinding poverty and he died at the age of 85, impoverished but with a lasting poetic legacy. This book tells a captivating tale of action, adventure and lasting friendships. We meet some of the finest writers of the last century, including Yeats, Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky. And at the heart of Bunting's remarkable life lies one of the greatest love stories of the twentieth century.

About this title

Review:

A triumph...Richard Burton's thorough and companionable life of Basil Bunting gives us, at long last, the biography Bunting's work merits and his readers deserve. --Don Share, Editor Poetry (Chicago) This is an extraordinary life, the tale of the century as it goes, and Richard Burton's excellent detective work tells it vividly. --Tom Pickard

A major contribution to modern literary studies. --Matthew Sperling, Literary Review

Must surely stand as the definitive reference work --The Spectator

...thoroughly researched and enthralling. --Mark Ford, The Guardian

This first proper biography ... [is] tremendously diligent and feisty and energetic. --Michael Hofmann, London Review of Books

Captivating...Burton's splendid biography may just release Bunting's work from cult status. --The Independent

Excellently measured...holds its nerve in the grip of Bunting s seemingly obsessive wandering -- Cambridge Humanities Review

Monumental...the story of a life more interesting than fiction -- Modernism/Modernity

Goes a long way to restoring Bunting to his rightful place among the greats of Anglo-American literary modernism -- American Conservative

Resurrects a man whose reckless brilliance...blazed a trail through almost every pillar of the establishment -- Belgravia

Magnificently researched -- Manchester Review

Very good...this book should have START HERE written on it. -- Lady Godiva and Me

Stunning and...definitive -- The Allen Ginsberg Project

A life that sticks in the mind -- Oxford Today

Ties together the many diverse strands of Bunting's...agonizingly contradictory life -- Rain Taxi

Does full justice to a remarkable life --The New Criterion

Reads like a racy, picaresque novel indispensable...a lavishly detailed, meticulously researched biography, which is unlikely to be bettered --London Magazine

Definitive, well researched and compelling...Burton's close readings of [Briggflatts] are sensitive --New Left Review

One of the best 25 biographies ever --Esquire

About the Author:

Richard Burton is Managing Director of a publishing company. He was introduced to the poetry of Basil Bunting while at Oxford and studied it while completing his PhD on the early poetry of W. B. Yeats. He has for many years lamented the neglect of Basil Bunting and with A strong song tows us aims to revive interest in Bunting's precise, beautiful, expertly crafted poems. He lives in Oxford.

About this edition

• Publisher: Infinite Ideas Limited
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1908984252
• ISBN 13: 9781908984258
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 624