Soil and Spirit by Scott Chaskey

Author:Scott Chaskey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Milkweed Editions

I am looking at Bunting over my shoulder. In my study, placed before two windows that face the rising of the sun above the oaks and pitch pines, and—at select times of year—Venus as the morning star: a four-foot-tall wooden sculpture of Bunting, inspired by a photograph of a dapper fellow in suit and tie, serious but relaxed, reflective, seated in a wicker chair somewhere in Tenerife, 1930-something. My dear friend and stepfather-in-law, the celebrated one-of-a-kind American sculptor William King, found the photo in a book review of A Strong Song Tows Us: The Life of Basil Bunting by Richard Burton. After his seventy years of carving and constructing in every imaginable material, this was Bill’s last piece, a few months before he passed away at age ninety, and in a tender moment he revealed this sculpture, his art, as a gift. Bunting has been with me for fifty years, in one form or another, and as the stars disperse, a gentle morning light reaches his likeness, carved in balsa. By a twist of fate, I’ve inherited Bill’s chisels, tools he cared for and carved with, making audacious art for decades. “Now the year ages,” in Bunting’s words, the choice is obvious, the tool is at hand. I grip a chisel, to write.

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