http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/10/youthful-forms/ A blog from the Poetry Foundation where contemporary poets debate classic and contemporary poetry from America and around the world. Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:12:11 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/10/youthful-forms/#comment-1221 Ange Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:43:33 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=440#comment-1221 Don, please do share your Bunting expertise. I think he has a lot to teach us about handling materials -- not only vowels and consonants, but the "material" of our lives -- and I'm constantly trying to get a handle on it. It seems like the lyric force leads us away from historical facts and more toward movements, phases, abstract things. It's very useful. Don, please do share your Bunting expertise. I think he has a lot to teach us about handling materials — not only vowels and consonants, but the “material” of our lives — and I’m constantly trying to get a handle on it. It seems like the lyric force leads us away from historical facts and more toward movements, phases, abstract things. It’s very useful.

]]> http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/10/youthful-forms/#comment-1220 Don Share Fri, 12 Oct 2007 19:16:38 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=440#comment-1220 I hope it's OK, as a sort of resident expert on Bunting, to add that the poem, which BB dedicated as "An autobiography /// For Peggy" is acompanied by his own brief notes, at the end of which he explains: "An autobiography, but not a record of fact. The first movement is no more a chronicle than the third. The truth of the poem is of another kind." At a reading in Buffalo, he remarked that the poem follows the "phases of a lifetime in line with the phases of a year without any attempt to bring in historical facts." BB had met his first and eventually long lost love, Peggy Greenbank, in 1912, and this poem to her was written to her in the mid-1960's: it articulates adolescence as seen by a man growing older and looking back... way back. The poem was first published in <i>Poetry</i> 107, no. 4 (January 1966), [213]-237. See stuff <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=932" rel="nofollow">here</a>. I hope it’s OK, as a sort of resident expert on Bunting, to add that the poem, which BB dedicated as “An autobiography /// For Peggy” is acompanied by his own brief notes, at the end of which he explains:
“An autobiography, but not a record of fact. The first movement is no more a chronicle than the third. The truth of the poem is of another kind.”
At a reading in Buffalo, he remarked that the poem follows the “phases of a lifetime in line with the phases of a year without any attempt to bring in historical facts.”
BB had met his first and eventually long lost love, Peggy Greenbank, in 1912, and this poem to her was written to her in the mid-1960’s: it articulates adolescence as seen by a man growing older and looking back… way back.
The poem was first published in Poetry 107, no. 4 (January 1966), [213]-237.
See stuff here.

]]>