Letter to the Guardian "Star-struck--
Thanks to Alan Hollinghurst for discovering Frederick Tuckerman's poetry ('Intimacy with a stranger', January 31), but is the quoted star-description really 'unsurpassed'? Here is Basil Bunting's, from 'Briggflatts' (1965): '... Aldebaran, low in the clear east, / beckoning boats to the fishing. / Capella floats from the north / with shields hung on his gunwale. / That is no dinghy's lantern / occulted by the swell - Betelgeuse, / calling behind him to Rigel. / Starlight is almost flesh ... Furthest, fairest things, stars, free of our humbug, / each his own, the longer known the more alone, / wrapt in emphatic fire roaring out to a black flue ...' Surely Bunting takes the garland.
Mark Thompson
Oxford "