Basil Bunting, The Spoils

Glyn Pursglove (Swansea University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1951

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem collection

Resources

The Spoils, as published, is a poem in three parts; Bunting originally designed it as a “sonata” in four parts but in response to comments by Louis Zukofsky on a draft of the poem, Bunting somewhat hurriedly conflated parts three and four of his original design. The result is, as Bunting himself was later to feel, a certain “lopsidedness”. A central theme of the poem is stated in its first four lines:

Man's life so little worth,
do we fear to take or lose it?
No ill companion on a journey, Death
lays his purse on the table and opens the wine.

In the symmetrically constructed Part I, four speakers (their speeches as neatly ordered as a fugue) offer their variations on this …

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486 words

Citation: Pursglove, Glyn. "The Spoils". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7810, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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