Basil Bunting, The First Book of Odes

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 1965

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Ode
Poem collection

Resources

The first publication of the Fulcrum Press, which was to make an important contribution to poetry publishing in Britain, Bunting's First Book of Odes, was published in a limited edition of less than two hundred copies. It reprints the 34 poems designated “Odes” in Poems: 1950, adding to them “The Orotova Road”, which was included in Poems: 1950 but not then included in the “Odes”, and two further poems “On highest summit dawn comes soonest” and “On the Fly-Leaf of Pound's Cantos”. “My odes are called odes”, Bunting declared in one interview, “because Horace called his odes. An ode is essentially a sonnet to be sung, not all of mine are meant to be sung; most of them are”. Some of the …

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373 words

Citation: Pursglove, Glyn. "The First Book of Odes". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=863, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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