Background to the poem

What is the value of poetry? To the speaker of Bunting’s humorous dramatic monologue, poetry is a complete waste of time and effort, an excuse to avoid doing work in the real world.

Bunting creates and dramatises a scenario in which the poet is put in the humbling position of asking for work. Notice how the poet is insulted, demeaned and humiliated at will by the speaker. He is told that what he writes is ‘rot’, and that a ‘ten year old’ could do better. Bluntly expressing common prejudices against poetry, the accountant is presented as conceited and boorish.

It is quite clear that the speaker is responding dismissively to what the poet says. Why doesn’t Bunting give the poet a voice? What is the effect of excluding the poet’s part of this conversation?

Written in short, unrhymed tercets which fit neatly the curt, matter-of-fact phrasing of the accountant, the poem seems to show the entirely unequal relationship between the two characters and, by implication, more widely, between the world of finance and the world of art. However, the poet has the last ironic laugh, turning the accountant’s words into poetry and rebutting his argument. Bunting takes his poetic revenge.

About Basil Bunting

It was only after the publication of his modernist masterpiece Briggflatts in 1966 that the Northumbrian poet Basil Bunting secured his place as an important contributor to twentieth‑century poetry. A Quaker whose pacifism led to his imprisonment as a conscientious objector for six months during the First World War and a nomadic wanderer whose travels took him to Italy, France, the USA and Persia, Bunting earned a living at times as a journalist. Fluent in classical Persian, he also worked for a period in Persia as a translator for the RAF in the Second World War and continued to work for the British Embassy until 1952.

Bunting met Ezra Pound in 1923 and the two poets became close friends, in spite of political differences, bringing Bunting into contact with an avant-garde literary scene. He was an accomplished reader of his own verse and believed strongly in the sonic qualities of poetry.

Read more about Basil Bunting in the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography