Bunting's poetry [deals] in the structure of meanings and, moreover, the meanings are organised according to a musical architecture—that of sonata form….

For some years Bunting sought the kind of musical structure he required for his poetry, but he must have fixed his choice very early on the sonata, rather than on the more impressionistic prelude, for example. His first published long poem, Villon (1925), is based on simple sonata form, although he had embarked on more complicated variants at first…. (p. 47)

Villon (1925) is a very good example of how the poet's elementary sonata technique works. In fact, it has a pure, simple sonata structure that Bunting never bettered, if one considers that the later "sonatas" are much more complicated in form and often go far beyond the ordinary sonata because of the complexity of the themes involved…. Not only does each individual part have a beautifully structured...