Christopher Logue's 'Caption for a photograph of four organized criminals'

Christopher Logue (1926-2011)

Logue’s reputation rests securely on his version of Homer. ‘War Music’ may be one of the best narrative poems of the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

But his ‘Selected poems’ show he was equally skilled with shorter, non-narrative forms.

The Selected contains two versions of well known poems by Franciose Villon (?1431-?1463). They are very much versions rather than strict translations. The French original for this one goes by different names: Ballade des pendus, Epitaphe Villon or Frères humains. The most arresting images in Logue’s poem are not in the original, nor is the ‘argument’ the poem offers.

If you’re interested in seeing what Logue did with that original, the French text and a literal translation can be found here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballade_des_pendus

This poem is taken from Christopher Logue, Selected Poems Faber 2019.

Basil Buntings' 'Villon'

Basil Bunting (1900-1985) is one of the great English poets of the 20th century. Briggflatts, which for many people is the poem that substantiates that claim was written at the end of a long writing life, and tends to overshadow his earlier poems.

Villon is the first of his ‘sonatas’, the name he gave to his longer poems. Published when he was in his mid twenties, it tangles his interest in Villon the medieval poet with his own experiences in gaol as a conscientious objector and his more recent run in with the French police.