Basil Bunting, The First Book of Odes

Glyn Pursglove (Swansea University)
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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 finest of Bunting's odes are, in effect, meditations on the art they…

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Citation: Pursglove, Glyn. "The First Book of Odes". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=863, accessed 19 March 2024.]

863 The First Book of Odes 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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