Recent content by Benny Bunter

Where's the River Poets' urgent tub-thumping modernist manifesto? You have to have a manifesto or it's not a real movement

It's a bit like the futurists in that the manifesto is probably more exciting than the actual work itself

Is your new book out yet Luka?

Maybe he just read the good half

he didn't rate his own stuff at all and said it's more important and more fun to be a reader than a writer

I haven't read any of Borges poems but I like listening to him speak about poetry

@sus listen to these

From what I've gathered she's closer to Bloom than Kenner in taste (no time for Ezra Pound, loves Wallace Stevens) but less self-important and show off than the former. Good for that quite traditional close reading style of criticism. A good reader.

I think she's a good critic in that she just sticks to talking about the poems themselves rather than bringing all these tedious -isms into it.

That's sad, I really liked her. Wanted to get one of her books on Wallace Stevens but they're too expensive now. Her book on Shakespeare's sonnets is supposed to be great too.

An old french word for a type of arrow fired from a crossbow apparently

Check out the difference between Chapman's and Pope's versions:

Just finished Chapman's Iliad. Loved the long free-flowing lines that manage to pack in so much without becoming clogged up, every single death (and it's a very high body count) described in vivid, gory detail, none of that pompous neoclassical stuff. Great to read out loud too. Can't imagine...