Complete Poems
'Take a chisel to write,' he says in "Briggflatts." What he wrote, stays. --Robert CreeleyA compelling musicality that has its own economy, that budgets expressiveness against restraint, tunefulness against sense. --Poetry, W.S. Di Piero, March 2005Another beautiful, almost edible production from New Directions. --Lyndon Davies,Poetry Wales, Spring 2004His poems are the most important which have appeared in any form of the English language sinceThe Waste Land.--Hugh MacDiarmidLikely the most exceptional lyric poet of the twentieth century writing in English....this work...deserves our most enduring attentions. --Peter O'Leary,Talisman, Winter 2003The major poet of postwar Britain: a master of concision, a superb literary translator, a great lyricist. --Stephen Burt,The Nation, 3 January 2004There is verse which is directly melodic, which seems to sing rather than speak. Basil Bunting is a master of this. --G.S. Fraser,Times Literary SupplementThis new edition of a great modernist innovator is a gift for the reading public. --Jamey Hecht,American Book Review, September/October 2004We are most fortunate to have Bunting's poems in print once again. --August Kleinzahler