The first publication of the Fulcrum Press, which was to make an important contribution to poetry publishing in Britain, Bunting's

, was published in a limited edition of less than two hundred copies. It reprints the 34 poems designated “Odes” in

, adding to them “The Orotova Road”, which was included in

but not then included in the “Odes”, and two further poems “On highest summit dawn comes soonest” and “On the Fly-Leaf of Pound's Cantos”. “My odes are called odes”, Bunting declared in one interview, “because Horace called his odes. An ode is essentially a sonnet to be sung, not all of mine are meant to be sung; most of them are”. Some of the finest of Bunting's odes are, in effect, meditations on the art they…

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Citation: Pursglove, Glyn. "The First Book of Odes". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=863, accessed 26 November 2024.]