''Redimiculum Matellarum'' (the title means 'A necklace of chamberpots') was the first collection of poetry published by

Basil Bunting Basil Cheesman Bunting (1 March 1900 – 17 April 1985) was a British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of '' Briggflatts'' in 1966, generally regarded as one of the major achievements of the modernist traditio ...

Publication

The pamphlet collection, privately printed in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

in 1930, included 13 poems written between 1925 and 1929. Priced at 'Half a Crown or Twelve Lire', it had been subsidized by Margaret de Silver, widow of a wealthy American businessman, whose help Bunting acknowledged in the preface: Bunting's poem 'Villon' was followed by two sections of shorter poems: 'Carmina' (containing 'Weeping oaks grieve', I am agog for foam', 'Against the tricks of time', 'After the grimaces of capitulation', 'Narciss, my numerous cancellations prefer' and 'Empty vast days') and 'Etcetera' (containing 'An arles, an arles for my hiring', 'Loud intolerant bells', 'Dear be still', 'Chorus of Furies (overheard)', 'Darling of Gods and Men' and 'As to my heart'.

Reception

Though ''Redimiculum Matellarum'' went "virtually unnoticed", it did receive a review by

Louis Zukofsky Louis Zukofsky (January 23, 1904 – May 12, 1978) was an American poet. He was the primary instigator and theorist of the so-called "Objectivist" poets, a short lived collective of poets who after several decades of obscurity would reemerge a ...

in ''

Poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

''.Louis Zukofsky, ''Poetry'', June 1931

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

also paid tribute to the collection in

Canto The canto () is a principal form of division in medieval and modern long poetry. Etymology and equivalent terms The word ''canto'' is derived from the Italian word for "song" or "singing", which comes from the Latin ''cantus'', "song", from the ...

LXXIV as "'Redimiculum Matellorum' / privately printed / to the shame of various critics".

References

{{Authority control English poetry collections 1930 poetry books Poetry by Basil Bunting