J. H. Prynne

[william_kent]

I bought both, so best of both worlds, etc.,

 

[luka]

i'll type another page out when i can be bothered. might go and find some food in a bit tho

 

[william_kent]

latency has the better cover though

the reproduction on the frontispiece is really nice, the greaseproof paper is a nice touch

 

[Benny Bunter]

Maybe as he's approaching death he has the urge to return to a childlike state or something.

"Mortal shuttle" reminds me of Hamlet's shuffling off this mortal coil

 

[william_kent]

Maybe as he's approaching death he has the urge to return to a childlike state or something.

"Mortal shuttle" reminds me of Hamlet's shuffling off this mortal coil

i'm sure that's intentional

you've got the familiarity of the tongue twister on the first line, but then he messes it up on the second and introduces "time" and then you've got the whole death trip on the third...

 

[Benny Bunter]

Cypher wafer liquid
codeine off therewith
stem or willow viscid
elder for hollow pith

there's an organic versus synthetic thing going on, and a reiteration of themes explored in earlier works...

noun: pith

1. 1.
   the spongy white tissue lining the rind of oranges, lemons, and other citrus fruits.
   • BOTANY
     the spongy cellular tissue in the stems and branches of many higher plants.
   • ARCHAIC
     spinal marrow.
2. 
   
3. 2.
   the essence of something.
   "a book that he believed contained the pith of all his work"
   vigour and conciseness of expression.
   "he writes with a combination of pith and exactitude.
   or present participle: pithing
   1. 
      remove the pith from.
      "peel and pith the oranges"
      
      
   2. pierce or sever the spinal cord of (an animal) so as to kill or immobilize it.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Good word, pith.

Looks pretty clear these seemingly daft little childish poems have a dark undercurrent.

 

[william_kent]

noun: pith

my takeaway was he'd been on the bluelight forum (or, more likely, consulted his clever cambridge chemistry chums ) and learnt how to extract the codeine from over the counter headache remedies

dark stuff for sure

 

[Benny Bunter]

I guess he's old, in pain, approaching death and looking back over his life and works, and regressing back to childhood.

Don't think it's senility if he's still producing stuff like that Latency book, so clearly the nursery rhyme stuff is his way of dealing with mortality.

 

[luka]

theyre rubbish as nursery rhymes tho. surely he could write a half decent one if he put his mind to it

 

[Benny Bunter]

Well I haven't spent much time reading that nursery rhyme stuff cos I don't have the books, but I'm assuming they're not just nursery rhymes, there's something else going on.

 

[Benny Bunter]

No kid is ever going to read one

 

[luka]

i guess so. dunno what tho.

 

[luka]

into crimson, fold after fold regenerate light
reflected, contrite, self-raising thereunder
know now all better, inflicted alight mutable
incurved waived expertise pretext avoid-
ance. Opening impervious allowance prided
parentage tint reflected, next redress repair
imposition possible attachements hardihood;
to early hardly adduced whitening, blue to
grey-green earth warren forward into lateral
skip by parallel limit along constitutional
shoreline from banked cloud inured in red
infusible reversionary amount, calibrated
estate hillside gradient. However so legume
to clover sweeter rival entailed necessity,
tendency first pitch notarise magpie sheen

 

[william_kent]

into crimson, fold after fold regenerate light
reflected, contrite, self-raising thereunder
know now all better, inflicted alight mutable
incurved waived expertise pretext avoid-
ance. Opening impervious allowance prided
parentage tint reflected, next redress repair
imposition possible attachements hardihood;
to early hardly adduced whitening, blue to
grey-green earth warren forward into lateral
skip by parallel limit along constitutional
shoreline from banked cloud inured in red
infusible reversionary amount, calibrated
estate hillside gradient. However so legume
to clover sweeter rival entailed necessity,
tendency first pitch notarise magpie sheen

i used "legume" recently in an email to a professor, could have said "pea", but i felt so clever

 

[luka]

well done William.

 

[luka]

flicker brokerage; mustard never least plaster
maroon rockets will self-disclose below
recipiency seem; severance within alert
redeem likelihood semblancy expectation,
indigo. Anticipatory main element indulgent
for tributaries far up ahead pin nominal
enlaced pressure, clarify resection, listen
aversion nearly from long daybreak yellowtail
alluvial in rebated temporality whence rebated
temporality alembic ajar prudency adjuration,
oh-range hawkbit orange lunge circulatory
within lexical brim included clastic discretion
furlong; sailing brimful limbic phonemic
affiliation vocalised appraised shoulder to
grain extricate instantly exit mast.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I really like Pearls That Were, which seems like a forerunner to all this late nursery rhyme style stuff.

"Newly arise the classics in paraphrase,
newly precentral in a livid bond
to touch daylight and brush its wing
fluently, with all found."

"The classics in paraphrase" being a quote from Ezra Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. I think, like Pound, when he uses traditional forms (including nursery rhymes, but also when be inserts fragments of quotes from centuries of classic literature into his poems, and refers to Wordsworth and Shakespeare - 'Pearls that were his eyes' obv via Eliot - Beowulf, Chaucer etc etc, the list goes on) there's a similar attempt to "make it new" like Pound did. As weird and abstract as his work is, he's still very much much grounded in the literary tradition.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Which is to say that probably the most innovative, abstract you might say, poet of our times is also the most 'traditional' in a way, and I don't think that's an accident. He couldn't possibly be so weird and far out without having such a deep knowledge of the literary canon. You have to know what the rules are in order to break them so violently as he does.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

This looks like a piece of piss. I'm going to have a crack.

Braggart gunwale curse
(sung for warmth as we hid under the jetty)
Muskrat-spoiled oolikon
proper name as totem, ballast swung,
thwarts abraded, epitopic stung
(but only imaginary, mono no aware)

half greened painter slung, falls amid slats
pine curl, plane stub ochre, grained as fur velvet
only in looks and then only by mistake,
and error draws blood
soaking oleander, stores pelts and peat.
Beat flat with beaver tail, cast off, post-castoreum.

Return, pemmican smeared paper greaser
Unwrap a moleskin, castaway mussel,
Shuck and jive black magically, as if to avert Nahanni
Blade glints once, once only
Scrape, heave, painter loosed and spin away.