that Eliot is a better writer than Cocteau.

I might, however, get round to claiming that Cocteau
is an exception and a survival. And on the other hand, to
just, + shd/ also claim, r or admit, that Cocteau shows
awareness to certain contemporary pressures, extending in his
mental range from moods contemporar with Barbey d'Aurevilly
to moods contemporary with Mr Cummings. In his Antigone
is quite aware of economics though he doesn't use up many words
on the topic.

You are all, doubtless, tired to death of
"red" poetry, and Marxist dogma layed out in bad verse.
We have had socially s conscious poetry or near-beer
or whatever, crass propaganda etc/etc/ programatic verse
and no one has better distinguished between it and the real thin
thing than has Kitaseno Katue.. "evertheless in 1933
I managed despite the hostility of the British fool and
the diffidence of my publishers to get the "Active Anthology"
printed. And opening it after seven years I can still
take satisfaction in having got HUHHUHUNNGHH 49 pages
of Basil Bunting where only the book worm can efface him..

Mr Cummings has said " you can't sell the moon
to the moon". I believe the above mentioned anthology contains
more poets who are aware of money, as a problem, than any
other anthology ever has, though the better the poet ( in Europe )
the more certain you can be to surprise the old fogies and
Aunt Sallies of my generation by dragging up passages
the
definitely concerned with ethics and tragedy of money.
Ovid, Propertius, Dante, Lope de Vega, and Shakespeare
are all perfectly good browsing ground for the economist,
for the student of money as distinct from the bloke who

Canada's a bare land
For the North wind and the snow
Northumberland's a bare land
For men have made it so.

Sheep and cattle are poor men's food ,
Grouse is sport for the rich ;
Heather geows where the sweet grass might grow
For the cost of clearing the ditch.

A liner lying in the Clyde
Will take me to Quebec.
My sons 'll see the land I am leaving
As barren as her deck.

No one since Burns has used the old simple metres with
such force, EHHH. Bunting is aware not only of the
tragedy and the infamy back of the tragedy but of the
mode in which it worked.

His range is not limited to the " old style ", as
can be seen from the ultra modern " They say Etna "
ending in the idiom of newspaper headlines

MAN IS NOT AN END=PRODUCT
MAGGOT MAKES

Bunting has learned to write a most elegant hand in Persian
in process of translating Firdusi and among his longer
poems is a condensation of Chomei at Toyama.

A man's adventures are not necessarily part of his writing
though the EHHHH figure of the poet may gain
popularity from them. In this respect Bunting is all that
the romantic can desire. He has been jailed in three

insides said to me ( about a.d. 1910 ) " Boundt, haff you
gno B0liDigal Basshuntz ? ( Anglice : "ave you no political
passions? I hadn't.

And now my old friend Doc Williams ( Wm. Carlos ) can
hardly tolerate my existence ( because I am not a belchевik )
and I find it hard to excuse Wyndham Lewis last volume
from sheer difference with the opinions expressed. AHH
And Mr Joyce is no longer with us ,in the sense those
worlds wd. have conveyed in 1917 , and Johnnie Hargrave
calls Mr Eliot's Christianity " A lot of dead cod about
a dead god. ". All of which goes to show that the Tower of
Ivory "has gone West". At any rate temporarily both for us
us old buffers of the nineteen tens and for the youngsters.