Greek and Roman, Irish, Persian, Indian, Japanese and Chinese mythologies areeverywhere in the poetry of Bunting, Eliot, Pound and Yeats. Their favouring somemythologies over others are often justified by their definitions of identity and politics. Yettheir common point is a recurent rewriting of sexually or martially violent myths. Secondly,more than a theme, myth also provides a distanced reflection which enables the poets toformulate new ritual and spiritual beliefs, together with a new poetics meant to order andmake sense of what is seen as a chaotic 20th century.Finally, myth is a living and protean material, whose presence is both a shorthand forolder narratives and a broader horizon pointing to other rewritings. In its linguistic dimension,myth in translation emphasizes questions of rhythm and enables the incorporation of other artsinto poetry. Indeed, the use of myth suggests a fantasized return to the origins of language andthe arts. Myth enables poets to try and create total art works where mythical figures are bothlinguistic and musical objects, as well as pictural representations of the imagination. From thepossibilities afforded by myth stems a polyphonic and hybrid poetry, akin to the image of thecentaur and other monstrous creatures present in the poetic works of Bunting, Eliot, Poundand Yeats.
