Edited by Don Share, this slim anthology collects Basil Bunting's translations from Persian poetry by Rudaki, Ferdowsi, Manuchehri, Sa'di, Hafiz, and Obaid-e Zakani, including some that are previously unpublished. Bunting, who is widely regarded as one of the most important British poets of the twentieth century, proved unusual in his deep and abiding interest in Middle Eastern culture. Here, he renders poetry of remarkable tonal and emotional range in characteristically clear and resolute language.
An edition of the letters of the poet Basil Bunting (1900-1985). This is a long-awaited first selected edition of the letters of Basil Bunting, one of the major modernist poets of the twentieth century. It includes a large portion of Bunting's correspondence (around 200 letters) to recipients including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Harriet Monroe, William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, Ted Hughes, George Oppen, Allen Ginsberg, Donald Davie, and Tom Pickard. Following Bunting from his first encounters with major literary figures in London and Paris in the 1920s to his death in Northumberland in 1985, this selection showcases a narrative that is crucial to the history of modernism and modern poetry in English. Highlights include a long and detailed dialogue with Ezra Pound in the 1930s on political, economic, and literary subjects, a rich, ruminative exchange with the American poet Louis Zukoksfy lasting over four decades, and various accounts of the excitements and controversies of the Anglo-American poetry scene of the 60s and 70s. Whether Bunting is writing from New York at the height of the Depression, Iran in the aftermath of World War II, or the north of England during preparation of his masterpiece Briggflatts (1966), his prose is unfailingly sharp, eloquent, entertaining, and caustic. This edition contains detailed annotations of Bunting's letters, a critical introduction, glossary of names, and an editorial commentary.
Basil Bunting's work was published haphazardly throughout most of his life, and in many cases he did not oversee publication. This is the first critical edition of the complete poems, and offers an accurate text with variants from all printed sources. Don Share annotates Bunting's often complex and allusive verse, with much illuminating quotation from his prose writings, interviews and correspondence. He also examines Bunting's use of sources (including Persian literature and classical mythology), and explores the Northumbrian roots of Bunting's poetic vocabulary and use of dialect.
This study explores Basil Bunting's poetry position as a point of inspiration for younger poets, and describe the ways in which it acts as a platform to show that Anglo-American modernism was not incompatible with native traditions.
Sons of Ezra: British Poets and Ezra Pound is about the impact of Ezra Pound upon British poets writing today. It is the story of a presence, then of a voice and latterly of an idea. When Pound left London in 1920 after a stay of 12 years, his early ascendancy had waned, and during the 1930s his voice sounded more remotely in British ears. The first poet represented here, Edwin Morgan, began to read Pound towards the end of that decade. Pound's subsequent political reputation has meant that students now coming to university, born after his death in 1972, have not opened a book of his poems in the way that several who testify here remember doing with pleasure. There was a revival of British interest in Pound with the publication of the Pisan Cantos, and then in the 1960s and early 1970s, but since then there has been little public opportunity for British poets to reflect on Pound. Michael Alexander and James McGonigal invited British poets to whom Pound has meant something to reflect, and to testify. To the older writers he was a presence, but the youngest contributors were born at the time that Pound fell silent about 1960, and to them he is an historical figure, the greatest poetic influence since Wordsworth, whose ambition seems an example to avoid as much as to follow.
In The Poisoned Well, veteran BBC journalist Roger Hardy presents a realist's history of the Middle East, by weaving together stories of political strife and vivid firsthand accounts, to illustrate that the current conflicts and crises of the Middle East are borne out of the troubled legacy of Western imperialism in the region.
From the Biblical period and Classical Antiquity to the rise of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, aspects of Persian culture have been integral to European history. A diverse constellation of European artists, poets, and thinkers have looked to Persia for inspiration, finding there a rich cultural counterpoint and frame of reference. Interest in all things Persian was no passing fancy but an enduring fascination that has shaped not just Western views but the self-image of Iranians up to the present day. Persophilia maps the changing geography of connections between Persia and the West over the centuries and shows that traffic in ideas about Persia and Persians did not travel on a one-way street. How did Iranians respond when they saw themselves reflected in Western mirrors? Expanding on Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, and overcoming the limits of Edward Said, Hamid Dabashi answers this critical question by tracing the formation of a civic discursive space in Iran, seeing it as a prime example of a modern nation-state emerging from an ancient civilization in the context of European colonialism. The modern Iranian public sphere, Dabashi argues, cannot be understood apart from this dynamic interaction. Persophilia takes into its purview works as varied as Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Handel’s Xerxes and Puccini’s Turandot, and Gauguin and Matisse’s fascination with Persian art. The result is a provocative reading of world history that dismantles normative historiography and alters our understanding of postcolonial nations.
