Quotes by Basil Bunting

Basil Bunting

British poet

Lived from: 1900 - 1985

Category: Poets (Contemporary)

Born: 1 march 1900 Died: 17 april 1985

Quotes 1 till 11 of 11.

  • All you can usually say about a poem or a picture is, 'Look at it, listen to it.' Whether you listen to a piece of music or a poem, or look at a picture or a jug or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own.
    Source: On Poetry
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  • But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.
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  • Can a moment of madness make up for an age of consent?
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  • Gin the goodwife stint
    and the bairns hunger
    the Duke can get his rent
    one year longer.
    Source: Odes Gin the Goodwife Stint, I:14
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  • 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.
    Source: Odes What The Chairman Told Tom, II:6
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  • Sooner or later we must absorb Islam if our own culture is not to die of anemia.
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  • The Duke can get his rent
    and we can get our ticket
    twa pund emigrant
    on a C.P.R. packet.
    Source: Odes Gin the Goodwife Stint, I:14
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  • The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion; and the confusion is infectious and destructive. It is confusing and destructive to try and explain anything in terms of anything else, poetry in terms of psychology.
    Basil Bunting
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  • To appreciate present conditions, collate them with those of antiquity.
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  • Whether you listen to a piece of music, or a poem, or look at a picture or a jug, or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own.
    Basil Bunting
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  • Who says it's poetry, anyhow?
    My ten year old
    can do it and rhyme.
    Mr Hines says so, and he's a schoolteacher,
    he ought to know.
    Go and find work
    Source: Odes What The Chairman Told Tom, II:6
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