What The Chairman Told Tom
Poetry? It's a hobby.
I run model trains.
Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons.
It's not work. You don't sweat.
Nobody pays for it.
You
could advertise soap.
Art, that's opera; or repertory -
The Desert Song.
Nancy was in the chorus.
But to ask for twelve pounds a week -
married, aren't you? -
you've got a nerve.
How could I look a bus conductor
in the face
if I paid you twelve pounds?
Who says it's poetry, anyhow?
My ten year old
can do it
and rhyme.
I get three thousand and expenses,
a car, vouchers,
but I'm an accountant.
They do what I tell them,
my company.
What do
you do?
Nasty little words, nasty long words,
it's unhealthy.
I want to wash when I meet a poet.
They're Reds, addicts,
all delinquents.
What you write is rot.
Mr Hines says so, and he's a schoolteacher,
he ought to know.
Go and find
work.
— Basil Bunting
***
Quote:
Some Bunting Quotes
Bunting on Poets and Universities
There were mountebanks at the famous Albert Hall meeting, as well as a poet or two, but the worst, most insidious charlatans fill chairs and fellowships at universities ... or some other asylum for obsequious idlers.
"Lately a professor in this university"
said Khayyam of a recalcitrant ass,
"therefore would not enter, dare not face me."
Bunting on Islam
Sooner or later we must absorb Islam if our own culture is not to die of anaemia.
Bunting on Briggflatts
All old wives' chatter, cottage wisdom. No poem is profound.
Bunting's advice to young poets
I SUGGEST
1. Compose aloud; poetry is a sound.
2. Vary rhythm enough to stir the emotion you want but not so as to lose impetus.
3. Use spoken words and syntax.
4. Fear adjectives; they bleed nouns. Hate the passive.
5. Jettison ornament gaily but keep shape
Put your poem away till you forget it, then:
6. Cut out every word you dare.
7. Do it again a week later, and again.
Never explain - your reader is as smart as you.
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