A Strong Song Tows Us

by Richard Burton

  332. BB to DP, 11 December 1953, LILLY.

  333. SSLT, 197.

  334. PAID, 156.

  335. BB to LZ, 27 October 1953, HR.

  336. BB to LZ, 5 December 1953, HR.

  337. BB to DP, 14 December 1953, LILLY.

  338. BB to EP, 1 July 1954, BRBML.

  339. SSLT, 198.

  340. BB to EP, 28 November 1954, BRBML.

  341. D. Foreman, Senior Librarian at the Evening Chronicle, to Roger Guedalla, 9 March 1970 DUR.

  342. DESC.

  343. BB to EP, 9 July 1953, BRBML.

  344. BB to D. G. Bridson, 23 August 1955, LILLY. He was still railing against Mosaddeq and The Times ten years later. Poverty ‘brings so many unforseen [sic] humiliations besides the daily ignoble drudgery among foul people. I curse Mosaddeq and the Astor family every day.’ (BB to GT, 4 January 1965).

  345. BB to D. G. Bridson, 26 June 1957, LILLY.

  346. DESC.

  347. DESC.

  348. ‘83 Answers … and Some Questions’.

  349. FORDE, 55–6.

  350. BB to GT, 27 March 1965.

  351. BBNL, 44–5. Bunting’s RAF file records that his commission was relinquished on 10 February 1954 and that he retained his rank of Squadron Leader under the Navy, Army and Air Force Act 1954. It isn’t clear when he promoted himself by a rank to Wing Commader.

  352. Ahearn, 214. ‘P’ is Zukofsky’s son Paul who was thirteen at the time and a talented violinist. The ‘announcement’ probably relates to Paul’s debut recital at Carnegie Hall that year.

  353. BBNL, 46.

  354. BBNL, 45.

  355. BB to GT, 9 August 1957.

  356. ‘83 Answers … and Some Questions’.

  357. BB to LZ, 11 April 1957, HR.

  358. BB to EP, 11 December 1957, BRBML. Hettie had enjoyed a successful career at the Post Office and died a wealthy woman.

  359. BB to EP, 11 December 1957, BRBML.

  360. BB to Jonathan Williams, 22 February 1963, SUNY.

  361. LZ to BB, 21 November 1962, DUR.

  362. BB to LZ, June the New Moonth 1953, HR.

  363. BB to DG, 13 June 1964, SUNY.

  364. BB to DG, 23 November 1964, SUNY.

  365. CP, 71.

  366. BB to DP, 11 June 1965, LILLY.

  367. BBNL, 47.

  368. PAID, 158–9.

  369. Evening Chronicle, 12 June 1964.

  370. PAID, 160–1.

  371. BB to LZ, 28 July 1964, HR.

  372. BB to LZ, 7 September 1964, HR.

  373. BB to LZ, 16 September 1964, HR.

  374. Paris Review, 34, Summer 1965, 92–3.

  375. CP, 135.

  376. CP, 137.

  377. PAID, 162.

  378. TP to author, 15 March 2013.

  379. PAID, 163. That seems to have struck a chord. Jill Turnbull found a limerick from Bunting in her husband’s papers after Gael Turnbull died:

  There was a young lady called May

  who was got in the family way

  by the mate of a bugger,

  an ignorant bugger

  who always spelled c___ with a ‘k’.

  CHAPTER 4:

  AN ACKNOWLEDGED LAND

  1. B. Bunting, A Note on Briggflatts (Durham, 1989).

  2. CP, 61.

  3. CP, 144.

  4. AG, 11.

  5. Interview with Tom Pickard, 17 and 18 June 1981.

  6. Interview with Peter Bell, 3 September 1981.

  7. BB to LZ, 10 November 1964, HR. The one change from the original wording in the published version was the replacement of the word ‘spheres’ with ‘woods’.

  8. D. Davie, Pound (London, 1975), 83.

  9. BB to LZ, 6 December 1964, HR.

  10. BB to Donald Davie, 9 October 1975, Essex University Library.

  11. Interview with McAllister and Figgis, 10 November 1984.

  12. R. Bullard, The Camels Must Go: An Autobiography (London, 1961), 245.

  13. R. Bullard, Letters from Tehran: A British Ambassador in World War II Persia (London, 1991), 138, 145, 166.

  14. A. Ferdowsi, Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (transl. Dick Davis), (London, 2007), 513–4.

  15. MONT, 79.

  16. AG, 17. Don Share suggests it was more like fiteen thousand lines (donshare.blogspot.com).

  17. CP, 226.

  18. AG, 9–10.

  19. T. Gunn, Shelf Life (London, 1993), 61.

  20. BB to Roger Guedalla, 28 May 1970.

  21. N. Davies, Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe (London, 2011), 59.

  22. Ida was the king of Bernicia. Taliesin was a sixth-century court bard.

  23. Interview with Peter Bell, 3 September 1981.

  24. PI, 5.

  25. M. Ellmann, The Nets of Modernism: Henry James, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Sigmund Freud (Cambridge, 2010), 22.

  26. Ellmann, 14–34.

  27. P. Makin, ‘Silent, accurate lips’: Precision in Bunting’s poetry (Durham, 2000), unpaginated. Bunting regarded Makin as a sensitive reader of his poetry but ridiculed his readings in of meaning: ‘Makin amuses me that way. As I say, I think he’s one of the good critics. He takes great pains, but he is apt to read meanings in that you never put there!’ He was generally scathing of any analysis of his work, even that of his friends. He said of Eric Mottram’s readings that ‘where he got his guesswork from I didn’t know. Some of it was a load of rubbish’ (interview with McAllister and Figgis, 10 November 1984).

  28. PI, 9.

  29. Agenda, 8, 3–4, Autumn–Winter 1970, 118–19.

  30. Gunn, 63.

  31. Interview with Peter Bell, 3 September 1981.

  32. AG, 14. In another interview he said that the poem had been written on an old income tax return (MT, 79).

  33. Gunn, 64.

  34. BB to DG, 4 September 1965, DUR.

  35. Interview with Philip Trevelyan, 3 September 1981, published by Keele University, 1995.

  36. BB to D. G. Bridson, 20 April 1965, LILLY.

  37. nterview with Peter Bell, 3 September 1981.

  38. D. Share and C. Wiman (eds), The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of Poetry Magazine (Chicago, 2012), 6–7.

  39. Gunn, 64.

  40. Reading on 20 April 1976 at Allentown Community Center, Buffalo, NY, donshare.blogspot.com

  41. Gunn, 64.

  42. AG, 9–17.

  43. AG, 14.

  44. AG, 15. The slightly mistranscribed quotation is from Catullus 5, his celebrated ‘Vivamus mea Lesbia’, in Thomas Campion’s translation, ‘then must we sleep one ever-during night’. Bunting explained that ‘nox est perpetua una dormienda … is a much more complex line than any of the translators has ever got across. The una is never given its full value … Nox est perpetua: there is an everlasting night. Una dormienda doesn’t mean one night, it means a night that is all one, that never varies … I think that it’s probably from that line that the whole train of thought started, that brought back the various things that become matter in the poem.’ The line clearly inspired the close of Briggflatts (AG, 12–13).

  45. The full references for the Scarlatti sonatas to be used in readings of Briggflatts are L204 G major, L25 E major, L10 C minor, L275 E minor, L33 B minor, L58 D minor, L33 repeated (BB to VF, 6 June 1971, DUR).

  46. Interview with Peter Bell, 3 September 1981.

  47. P. Makin, Basil Bunting on Poetry (Baltimore, 1999), 10.

  48. Interview with McAllister and Figgis, 10 November 1984.

  49. Stephen Gill makes this point expertly. S. Gill, Wordsworth’s Revisitings (Oxford, 2011), 83–154.

  50. DESC. Williams clearly noticed something fishy about Bunting’s Quaker credentials:

  BB: The First World War was on and I had decided to refuse service, and I just had to wait until the police arrested me, almost on my 18th birthday.

  JW: Did your family support that position?

  BB: No.

  JW: They di
dn’t, with all that Quakerism?

  BB: No…

  51. PI, 9.

  52. Agenda, 12, 2 (Summer 1974, 37).

  53. DESC.

  54. Frederick Andrews celebrated Ellen Fry’s ‘natural gift for teaching, her buoyant temperament, [and] her prowess at cricket’ (Headmaster’s Address, 1920, 43). She seems to have been the real thing. There is not an inauthentic syllable in the encomium to friendship in her Presidential Address to Ackworth Old Scholars of Easter 1921.

  55. MT, 72.

  56. MONT, 68–9.

  57. Interview with Peter Bell on 3 September 1981.

  58. SYSB, 246–50. Davie’s claims that Bunting’s writing forms part of a long line of Protestant dissent were made in The Times Literary Supplement of 23 May 1986. They were partially, and unsatisfactorily, refuted by Richard Caddell in the issue of 20 June 1986, before being thoroughly demolished by Peter Makin in the 1 August 1986 issue.

  59. BB to LZ, 3 February 1951, HR.

  60. W.B.Yeats, Explorations (London, 1962), 295–6.

  61. SSLT, 9.

  62. Multi: Basil Bunting from the British Press (1976).

  63. BBC Radio 3 broadcast 7 March 1975 (KCL).

  64. BB to LZ, 18 December 1939, HR.

  65. SSLT, 66–7.

  66. MAK, 102.

  67. BB to GT, 12 August 1965. (‘Absit omen’ means ‘may no such misfortune befall us’.)

  CHAPTER 5:

  THEN IS NOW

  1. BB to DP, 11 June 1965, LILLY.

  2. King Ida’s Watch Chain (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1965).

  3. M. Horowitz (ed.), Children of Albion: Poetry of the ‘Underground’ in Britain (Harmondsworth, 1969), 326. King Ida’s Watch Chain received very little attention but John Clare reviewed it and pointed approvingly to Bunting’s craftsmanship. Bunting was a poet’s poet: ‘If Mr Bunting achieves a permanent resurrection … it will be because poets at least will always remember a man who has done a few things exceedingly well’ (J. Clare, ‘A Critical Look at Bunting’s Poems’, Newcastle Journal, 1 September 1965, 6). King Ida’s Watch Chain is the huge anchor chain that hangs in Bamburgh Castle. The band of the same name was fronted by Tom Pickard.

  4. BB to DP, 29 September 1965, LILLY.

  5. Poetry, June 1967, 195–7; Agenda, Autumn 1966, 11–17; New Statesman, 17 December 1965, 976; Observer, 24 October 1965, 27; Sunday Times, 26 September 1965, 47.

  6. Scotsman Week-end Magazine, 19 March 1966, 5; Evening Chronicle, 29 January 1966, 4; Sunday Times, 19 June 1966, 29; Poetry, November 1966, 110–2; Agenda, Autumn 1966, 12; Guardian, 18 February 1966, 8; Observer, 2 January 1966.

  7. Times Literary Supplement, 17 February, 3 March and 10 March 1966.

  8. LZ to BB, 28 February 1966, DUR.

  9. LZ to BB, 19 March 1966, DUR.

  10. Agenda, Autumn 1966, 10, 17; Encounter, January 1970, 54–62; Encounter, 29, November 1967, 74–5; Tribune, 3 March 1967, 14; E. Lucie-Smith, ‘A man for the music of words’, Sunday Times, 25 July 1965, 33.

  11. BB to GT, 17 June 1965.

  12. Sunday Times, 7498, 12 February 1967, 53.

  13. SSLT, 199.

  14. D. Davie, ‘Privately Published’, New Statesman, 4 November 1966, 672; Evening Chronicle, 26 February 1966, 4; Scotsman Week-end Magazine, 8 October 1966, 3; Tarasque, 3; Stand, 8, 2, 1966, 34; Agenda, Autumn 1966, 17, 18, 20–8; National Review (19, 43), 31 October 1967, 1217–8; Guardian, 3 March 1967; Observer, 26 March 1967; Times Literary Supplement, 16 February 1967; London Magazine, May 1967, 70–3.

  15. BB to EP, 29 March 1967, BRBML.

  16. A. Ginsberg, ‘On Basil Bunting’, International Times, 16–19 January 1967, 14.

  17. Guardian, 15 June 1965.

  18. G. Steiner (ed.), The Penguin Book of Modern Verse Translation (Harmondsworth, 1966), 154–6.

  19. Menard Press 1969–2009 (London, 2010), 18.

  20. Sunday Times supplement, 19 January 1969, 34–8.

  21. W. Corbett, ‘Remembering Basil Bunting’, MTBB.

  22. A reading to celebrate his seventieth birthday on BBC 2 on 2 March, a reading of Wordsworth’s ‘The Brothers’ on the Third Programme on 7 April and repeated on 9 September, and a reading of Wordsworth’s ‘Michael’ on 19 April.

  23. SSLT, 200.

  24. BB to DG, 17 July 1965, SUNY.

  25. BB to DP, 11 July 1965, LILLY.

  26. Turnbull and Whyte, 67.

  27. BB to GT, 13 May 1965. The fact that Bunting ‘foresaw and expected’ Turnbull’s finding lends weight to the possibility that Briggflatts was conceived specifically to encourage a reconciliation with Peggy. This suggestion is only strengthened by Tom Pickard’s comment that ‘it was as though his creation had stepped out of the canvas.’ When the relationship started to falter, ‘like a dream … he couldn’t seem to write himself into his own creation.’ (George Oppen Memorial Lecture, 2004).

  28. BB to GT, 21 June 1965. Cissie’s memories of Bunting stretched back to when she was ‘only 4 or 5 years old – my lasting impression was of Edinburgh rock. He always brought me a box’ (Jean Armstrong (née Greenbank) to W. S. Milne, 8 July 1978, DUR).

  29. BB to DG, 11 August 1965, DUR.

  30. BB to DG, 8 November 1965, SUNY.

  31. The irony is that Bunting could not see beyond the Peggy he knew as a child. She took Stuart Montgomery to one side shortly after the reunion and said, “I don’t understand what he sees in me … he sees me as a small child, he looks at me and sees me as I was. He doesn’t see me as I now am.” (quoted in T. Pickard, George Oppen Memorial Lecture, 2004).

  32. BB to DG, 25 February 1966, DUR.

  33. BB to GT, 3 September 1966.

  34. BB to RBD, 4 August 1969, DUR.

  35. Turnbull and Whyte, 72.

  36. BB to GT, 16 April 1968.

  37. BB to RBD, 14 April 1966, DUR. Ed Dorn considers Briggflatts ‘the greatest love poem of the twentieth century, ’ (T. Pickard, George Oppen Memorial Lecture, 2004).

  38. SSLT, 206.

  39. CP, 138.

  40. CP, 139.

  41. BB to DP, 30 May 1967, LILLY.

  42. CP, 140. Tom Pickard revealed the identity of the model for the Chairman of what he called ‘Bunting’s satirical poke at municipal morons’ in 2000. She was ‘the Lord Mayor [of Newcastle City Council] and the chairman of the Cultural Activities Committee, Mrs. Gladys Robson, magistrate, leader of the council’ (T. Pickard, ‘Rough Music (Ruff Muzhik)’, Chicago Review, Spring 2000).

  43. Reading, February 1982, London.

  44. CP, 141.

  45. Reading, February 1982, London.

  46. CP, 136.

  47. BB to Robert Creeley, 20 November 1966, DUR.

  48. BB to GT, 3 December 1966.

  49. BB to GT, 1 March 1968.

  50. T. Pickard, George Oppen Memorial Lecture, 2004.

  51. CONJ, 154.

  52. CONJ, 154–7.

  53. T. Connor, Things Unsaid: New and Selected Poems 1960–2005 (London, 2006), 124–8.

  54. SSLT, 205.

  55. SSLT, 5.

  56. PAID, 13.

  57. CONJ, 157.

  58. CONJ, 157.

  59. BB to EP, 8 July 1966, BRBML.

  60. BB to Cid Corman, 29 April 1967, SUNY.

  61. BB to GT, 24 July 1966.

  62. BB to JW, 4 May 1976, SUNY.

  63. BB to GT, 9 September 1966.

  64. BB to EP, 13 September 1966, BRBML.

  65. London Review of Books, 18 February 1999.

  66. Turnbull and Whyte, 71–2. Peggy was equally distressed. She sent Bunting a ‘heart-broken letter’ in September when she discovered that he was going to be away for so long (BB to RBD, 7 September 1966, DUR).

  67. Letter from Alan Brilliant to author, 28 March 2011.

  68. B. Bunting, Two Poems (Santa Barbara, 1967).

  69. Agenda, Autumn 1966, 3.

  70. BB to DP, 28 March 1971, LILLY.

  71. BB to Department of English, 21 January 1970, SUNY.
<
br />   72. BB to JW, 11 December 1966, SUNY.

  73. BB to GT, 5 October 1966.

  74. BB to Robert Creeley, 20 November 1966, DUR.

  75. BB to DP, 21 May 1967, LILLY.

  76. BB to Robert Creeley, 10 January 1967, DUR.

  77. BB to GT, 16 July 1968.

  78. BB to DP, 21 May 1967, LILLY.

  79. BB to EP, 29 March 1967, BRBML.

  80. CP, 143.

  81. CP, 228.

  82. BB to JW, 23 April 1974, SUNY.

  83. BB to DP, 21 May 1967, LILLY.

  84. BB to TP, 30 March 1967, SUNY.

  85. BB to EP, 29 March 1967, BRBML.

  86. BB to GT, 22 January 1967.

  87. MTBB.

  88. TERR, 64.

  89. TERR, 64.

  90. BB to JW, 21 April 1968, SUNY.

  91. PAID, 129.

  92. BB to EP, 29 March 1967, BRBML.

  93. BB to Cid Corman, 29 April 1967, SUNY.

  94. FORDE, 59.

  95. FORDE, 60.

  96. BB to RBD, 30 August 1966, DUR.

  97. Marian Bunting to Helen Groves, 11 September 1968, DUR.

  98. BB to RBD, 7 September 1966, DUR.

  99. BB to RBD, 7 September 1966, DUR.

  100. BB to RBD, 7 September 1966, DUR.

  101. BB to JW, 27 August 1967, SUNY. By 1968, when Marian updated Roger Guedalla on the Bunting family history, their two daughters were married, one living in Inglewood, California, and the other in Madison, Wisconsin. There were by now ten grandchildren (Marian Bunting to Roger Guedalla, 25 September 1968, DUR).

  102. BB to TP, 28 August 1967, SUNY.

  103. BB to GT, 26 August 1967.

  104. L. P. Faranda (ed.) Between Your House and Mine: The Letters of Lorine Niedecker to Cid Corman, 1960 to 1970 (Durham, 1986), 127.

  105. Faranda, 172.

  106. Truck, 16, 1975, 52.

  107. J. Penberthy (ed.), Lorine Niedecker Collected Works (Berkeley, 2002), 253–4. ‘I don’t know why it was that I couldn’t have done a better poem,’ she wrote to Cid Corman in March 1970. Conjunctions, 5, 1983, 167.

  108. ‘The Ballad of Basil’ appeared in Stony Brook, 3–4 (1969), 31. Cid Corman collected it in Blue Chicory (New Rochelle, 1976).

  109. Gail Roub, ‘Getting to know Lorine Niedecker’ in J. Penberthy (ed.), Lorine Niedecker: Woman and Poet (Orono, 1996), 81.

  110. FORDE, 60.

  111. PI, 44.

  112. SYSB, 256.

  113. Interview with McAllister and Figgis, 10 November 1984.