J. H. Prynne

[Benny Bunter]

That isn't exclusive to poetry; Joyce, Burroughs, D&G and others have done it too.

Agreed. After I posted that, I did think that there were probably other examples outside of 'poetry' it would apply to.

 

[version]

Here form is content, content is form. You complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read -—- or rather it is not only to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something; it is that something itself.

Beckett on Finnegans Wake

 

[Benny Bunter]

Here form is content, content is form. You complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read -—- or rather it is not only to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something; it is that something itself.

Beckett on Finnegans Wake

That's a great quote. Wallace Stevens' has a poem called Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself. William Carlos Williams has "no ideas but in things", Pound's imagist manifesto has the "direct treatment of the thing".

They don't all mean exactly the same thing, but they're all kind of related ideas that were kicking around in modernism.

 

[version]

That's a great quote.

The full essay's here.

Dante… Bruno, Vico… Joyce

By Samuel Beckett The danger is in the neatness of identifications. The conception of Philosophy and Philology as a pair of nigger minstrels out of the Teatro dei Piccoli is soothing, like the con…

bibliot3ca.com

 

[luka]

read it already

 

[version]

read it already

 

[droid]

That's a great quote. Wallace Stevens' has a poem called Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself. William Carlos Williams has "no ideas but in things", Pound's imagist manifesto has the "direct treatment of the thing".

They don't all mean exactly the same thing, but they're all kind of related ideas that were kicking around in modernism.

This is Kant, the noumenon, the thing-in-itself, the ultimately unknowable objective reality of something - perhaps implying a double meaning in that Beckett quote.

 

[luka]

with wcw and the imagists its not so much the thing in itself in that sense so much as it is about the return to the noun. things. objects. stuff. more specifically, away from abstraction. back to things you can stub your toe against.

 

[Benny Bunter]

with wcw and the imagists its not so much the thing in itself in that sense so much as it is about the return to the noun. things. objects. stuff. more specifically, away from abstraction. back to things you can stub your toe against.

That's true, which is why I said they were different but related ideas around at the time. In the end all of it's figurative language though isn't it? There's always some level of abstraction in that sense. With Stevens, he goes very abstract indeed but he says "The real is only the base. But it is the base." So he's not so far off from the imagists as it might seem at first.

 

[luka]

yeah, it gets trickier with people like stevens

 

[version]

That's a great quote. Wallace Stevens' has a poem called Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself. William Carlos Williams has "no ideas but in things", Pound's imagist manifesto has the "direct treatment of the thing".

They don't all mean exactly the same thing, but they're all kind of related ideas that were kicking around in modernism.

There's a clip of Peter O'Toole, Orson Welles, an old Shakespearean actor and an interviewer discussing Hamlet where they're talking about the speed of Shakespeare's thought and how another actor found it difficult to think and keep up and O'Toole says the point is that you don't have to think, the line is the thought.

20:54

 

[version]

Such latency is legible by fortune at first sight
insistent past provision mutuable re-founded
welded entire stepwise in flicker colouration,
assemblage fringe turbulence recoil observ-
vational pent-up in pathway crystallised
tracing, at ginger-root expressive preser-
vative instated across tincture limit realised.
Adaptive discoverable as beyond exception,
surmounted by cardinal invert numeration,
alleged into transparency icy surface level
fully exceptional eventual, grizzled wherever
in grateful outreach; even at amounted
density, intial within plentiful dual purpose
first overturn sequence device plumage
outliasted at tricuspid. Intensity provoked

Hard not to think of D&G with the talk of limit, assemblage and intensity.

I read something the other week about a mounted archer being a classic example of an 'assemblage' due to the combination of horse, rider and bow.

 

[luka]

we've talked about the similiarities here loads. stuff about geology, metalology, botany, nomads especially. huge overlap. prynne a million times better of course

 

[jenks]

neither of them know how to read it.

I tried and enjoyed some but the effort v reward didn’t match up. In the end I didn’t care enough - the level of abstraction just left me cold. And, for me, he doesn’t have the swing or the rhythms of someone like Pound. But I like to eavesdrop on your conversations and think it’s nice someone is getting something out of what seems like word soup to me.

 

[Benny Bunter]

"He is a difficult, often rather obscure poet at a time when it is not very modish to be obscure; once understood, his work can prove rewarding. If one examines the ephemera of newspaper and journal reviews, one finds that his poetry has sometimes been dismissed by reviewers who think that confessing their own lack of understanding permits the arrogance of blind attack. But it has also sometimes been stoutly defended perhaps by those who, understanding perhaps fitfully, have made his difficulty into a virtue; the difficulties in Prynne mostly result from a deliberate choice of writing method in which the emphasis is upon the act of writing itself."

 

[william_kent]

the other Prynne that came out in February, Not Ice Novice, almost seems a total contrast to Latency

because

it rhymes!

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...

this reminds me of To Pollen:

As both new fill tooth
indent in want inclined
say all bested at sooth
elegant front refined

More dental work for Jeremy?

 

[luka]

hes such a weirdo. i heard about that rhyming one.

 

[Benny Bunter]

the other Prynne that came out in February, Not Ice Novice, almost seems a total contrast to Latency

because

it rhymes!

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...

this reminds me of To Pollen:

As both new fill tooth
indent in want inclined
say all bested at sooth
elegant front refined

More dental work for Jeremy?

Found this on twitter from it

 

[william_kent]

what's Jeremy doing here?

it's like a "reboot" of Snooty Tipoffs:

She sells her sea shells
on shore before in time
mortal shuttle at swells
ridden even to prime

( although I'm crap at maths, I recognise there are some mathematical / comp sci themes in this work )

 

[luka]

i think i prefer the one i bought i have to be honest