J. H. Prynne
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- 100 god damn pages butchering sontag cooking with propane corpsey why are you so thick deaths from bromo-dragonfly enjoy your journey enjoy! everyone! gravity bong happy to help! jamaican voodoo gang from predator 2 lads vs. dudes martin anus shaun from delaware stoned modernism teat. the albert ayler of the recorder the bee is the messiah the path clears by the use it gets thick as fuck to pollen traitor cow-juice west coast dudes
But by taking up the theme of waking, wakefulness and the flux of its attendant precepts through the course of a day, (‘in the life’), Brass takes on implicitly the claims to inclusion made by the two great counter-epical literary monuments of the standard modernist canon in English, Joyce’s Ulysses and Eliot’s Waste Land, and glances proleptically towards the mausoleum of both, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973). For Brass takes ‘place’ loosely over the course of a day only in order to confute the anomie and religiosity of Eliot, and the ambiguous reconciliations of Molly and Leopold with the more stellified arrangements of Pie and Outwash in the book’s closing poem, Of Sanguine Fire.
Thus Prynne’s book belongs to that genre which Ralph Maud has named ‘anti-wastelands’, for which Charles Olson’s The Kingfishers serves as his prime example. For where The Waste Land invokes apocalypse to purge secular horizons with a vengeful, culminating thunderclap, Brass takes the profoundly less comforting step of seeking to redeem the time which Eliot had desperately contemned, so that where the tagelied sequence closed by Into the Day takes a relatively providential view of change, (taking from Olson the image of the kingfisher ‘rested in that halcyon cycle’, and thus in passing becoming a subliminal elegy to Olson), in Brass all thought of Providence is guarded and largely held away, or hemmed in by lacerating whimsicalities which are the encamped substitutes for ‘wit’ in the no man’s land of the modern avant garde.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
this is an early one and a lot more approachable.
J.H. Prynne – The Holy City
Come up to it, as you stand there / that the wind is quite warm on the sides / of the face. That is so, felt / as a matter of practice, or / not to agree. And the span, / to walkgenius.com
Come up to it, as you stand there
that the wind is quite warm on the sides
of the face. That is so, felt...
etc.
Since you tagged me.
I find it hard to see what about this would grab you and give you the motivation to try harder to understand it.
With Eliot there's obviously a lot of difficulty but the beauty of some lines, and the disturbing quality of some lines, hooks me in and so I feel like it's actually worth the effort to screw up my forehead and try harder.
With this I just get confused and disengaged.
I recognise that I'm being lazy, probably even thick, but somebody's going to have to point out to me why I shouldn't be. (After all, thickness is so often a matter of not trying hard enough.)
I'm curious as to how you even got into him, Luka.
luka
Well-known member
this is an early one and a lot more approachable.
J.H. Prynne – The Holy City
Come up to it, as you stand there / that the wind is quite warm on the sides / of the face. That is so, felt / as a matter of practice, or / not to agree. And the span, / to walk
Come up to it, as you stand there
that the wind is quite warm on the sides
of the face. That is so, felt
as a matter of practice, or
not to agree. And the span,
to walk over the rough grass-all of this
is that we do, quite within acceptance
and not to press
the warm alarm
but a light
surface, a day
lifted from high
thich roots, upwards
Where we go is a loved side of the temple,
a place for repose, a concrete path.
There's no mystic movement involved: just
that we are
is how, each
severally we're
carried into
what drew me to this one was the sense that the encounter and the place and so on all happens in the self. i dont know if this is intended, but it is how i read it. that the
where we go
refers to a common habit of the mind, coming to a place of repose and, perhaps i shouldn't say reverence because there is no mystic movement involved, but this is the temple, and this is the holy city, and this is the place our highest values reside.
woops
is not like other people
right, i'm not a rigorous or informed reader but i love a bit of Prynne so here goes.
first thing i did was read Kitchen Poems ten times all the way through and more. This is a very confident first book I think and will give you a taste of Prynne's phrase-making which is original and elegant despite making little or no sense on first and tenth reading.
I'm always telling people that there are a couple of poems in the White Stones that are relatively "accessible" by Prynne standards, which are called "Break It" and "Against Hurt".
Brass is full of psychedelia and great lines, the last one, Of Sanguine Fire, is very bizarre and mind-boggling.
Luke and others have tried without much success in my opinion to extract some sense from his more statement-like episodes but the appeal for me is more that of a virtuoso linguistic innovator, when he's on form.
What struck me about The Holy City was the feeling of presence, that you are there somewhere as you read it. If all this sounds like an apologetic explanation that I don't understand but I like it anyway, that is probably correct.
first thing i did was read Kitchen Poems ten times all the way through and more. This is a very confident first book I think and will give you a taste of Prynne's phrase-making which is original and elegant despite making little or no sense on first and tenth reading.
I'm always telling people that there are a couple of poems in the White Stones that are relatively "accessible" by Prynne standards, which are called "Break It" and "Against Hurt".
Brass is full of psychedelia and great lines, the last one, Of Sanguine Fire, is very bizarre and mind-boggling.
Luke and others have tried without much success in my opinion to extract some sense from his more statement-like episodes but the appeal for me is more that of a virtuoso linguistic innovator, when he's on form.
What struck me about The Holy City was the feeling of presence, that you are there somewhere as you read it. If all this sounds like an apologetic explanation that I don't understand but I like it anyway, that is probably correct.
I had to read and reread a lot before I got to enjoy his writing.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Which part do you mean, and how do you mean?
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Ah I getcha
I thought you mean the opening lines, which seem to me to be very clear about what they mean (even if the meaning isn't at first very clear).
Those lines are almost provided as a key to understanding the oblique glimpses of his personal life that follow. Although they're so dry and prosaic that they probably put off a lot of readers instantly.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
There aren't many sweets in Four Quartets, at least not at the start.
Then you get some sweets in this bit:
"Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars."
Clear rhythm, some rhymes, the "trilling wire" singing in the blood. etc.
Prufrock OPENS with sweets, and proceeds to shower them down on you.
Ready now to develop an entire poetic theory around varying degrees of "sweets and veg" in verse
Then you get some sweets in this bit:
"Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars."
Clear rhythm, some rhymes, the "trilling wire" singing in the blood. etc.
Prufrock OPENS with sweets, and proceeds to shower them down on you.
Ready now to develop an entire poetic theory around varying degrees of "sweets and veg" in verse
Moon Poem
The night is already quiet and I am
bound in the rise and fall: learning
to wish always for more. This is the
means, the extension to keep very steady
so that the culmination
will be silent too and flow
with no trace of devoutness.
Since I must hold to the gradual in
this, as no revolution but a slow change
like the image of snow. The challenge is
not a moral excitement, but the expanse,
the continuing patience
dilating into forms so
much more than compact.
I would probably not even choose to inhabit the
wish as delay: it really is dark and the knowledge
of the unseen is a warmth which spreads into
the level ceremony of diffusion. The quiet
suggests that the act taken
extends so much further, there
is this insurgence of form:
we are more pliant than the mercantile notion
of choice will determine—we go in this way
on and on and the unceasing image of hope
is our place in the world. We live there and now
at night I recognise the signs
of this, the calm is a
modesty about conduct in
the most ethical sense. We disperse into the ether
as waves, we slant down into a precluded notion
of choice which becomes the unlearned habit of
wish: where we live, as we more often are than
we know. If we expand
into this wide personal vacancy
we could become the extent
of all the wishes that are now too far beyond
us. A community of wish, as the steppe
on which the extension would sprinkle out
the ethic density, the compact modern home.
The consequence of this
pastoral desire is prolonged
as our condition, but
I know there is more than the mere wish to
wander at large, since the wish itself diffuses
beyond this and will never end: these are songs
in the night under no affliction, knowing that
the wish is gift to the
spirit, is where we may
dwell as we would
go over and over within the life of the heart
and the grace which is open to both east and west.
These are psalms for the harp and the shining
stone: the negligence and still passion of night.
The night is already quiet and I am
bound in the rise and fall: learning
to wish always for more. This is the
means, the extension to keep very steady
so that the culmination
will be silent too and flow
with no trace of devoutness.
Since I must hold to the gradual in
this, as no revolution but a slow change
like the image of snow. The challenge is
not a moral excitement, but the expanse,
the continuing patience
dilating into forms so
much more than compact.
I would probably not even choose to inhabit the
wish as delay: it really is dark and the knowledge
of the unseen is a warmth which spreads into
the level ceremony of diffusion. The quiet
suggests that the act taken
extends so much further, there
is this insurgence of form:
we are more pliant than the mercantile notion
of choice will determine—we go in this way
on and on and the unceasing image of hope
is our place in the world. We live there and now
at night I recognise the signs
of this, the calm is a
modesty about conduct in
the most ethical sense. We disperse into the ether
as waves, we slant down into a precluded notion
of choice which becomes the unlearned habit of
wish: where we live, as we more often are than
we know. If we expand
into this wide personal vacancy
we could become the extent
of all the wishes that are now too far beyond
us. A community of wish, as the steppe
on which the extension would sprinkle out
the ethic density, the compact modern home.
The consequence of this
pastoral desire is prolonged
as our condition, but
I know there is more than the mere wish to
wander at large, since the wish itself diffuses
beyond this and will never end: these are songs
in the night under no affliction, knowing that
the wish is gift to the
spirit, is where we may
dwell as we would
go over and over within the life of the heart
and the grace which is open to both east and west.
These are psalms for the harp and the shining
stone: the negligence and still passion of night.
Apr 22, 2012
Kazoo Dreamboats or, On What There Is
there's no way i'll ever understand 25% of this, though I think I have some idea of Prynne's general project. coming from the wake of the changing economic/political paradigm, there is some sort of strange testimony. the contradiction between "dreamboats" & "what there is" along with the poem's dalliance with both dreamlike prose & scientific fact, is something i cannot really comprehend. how to give an account of something that is beyond language, in a zone of indistinction, but is clearly there? the increase of a surplus population in the UK in light of students becoming more & more burdened with debt (Prynne actually read parts of this at the Cambridge Occupation) means their inclusion as fodder within the capitalist system- their employment by the state to be unemployed. & with the riots last summer this is even more so the case. a massive army of people that are tired of being treated as if they aren't human. tired of being treated like they're not there when they clearly are. this is some sort of strange account of being able to feel what is not there, and not being able to feel what is there- because it is so terrifying. something strange with sensibility. anyhow, this motherfucker took me so long to read (even though it's only 22 pages). i think it's by far the most difficult text in the english language i've ever encountered. the idea that this makes sense in somebody's head (prynne's) is completely mind-boggling.
Kazoo Dreamboats or, On What There Is
there's no way i'll ever understand 25% of this, though I think I have some idea of Prynne's general project. coming from the wake of the changing economic/political paradigm, there is some sort of strange testimony. the contradiction between "dreamboats" & "what there is" along with the poem's dalliance with both dreamlike prose & scientific fact, is something i cannot really comprehend. how to give an account of something that is beyond language, in a zone of indistinction, but is clearly there? the increase of a surplus population in the UK in light of students becoming more & more burdened with debt (Prynne actually read parts of this at the Cambridge Occupation) means their inclusion as fodder within the capitalist system- their employment by the state to be unemployed. & with the riots last summer this is even more so the case. a massive army of people that are tired of being treated as if they aren't human. tired of being treated like they're not there when they clearly are. this is some sort of strange account of being able to feel what is not there, and not being able to feel what is there- because it is so terrifying. something strange with sensibility. anyhow, this motherfucker took me so long to read (even though it's only 22 pages). i think it's by far the most difficult text in the english language i've ever encountered. the idea that this makes sense in somebody's head (prynne's) is completely mind-boggling.
and's review of Kazoo Dreamboats or, On What There Is
5/5: there's no way i'll ever understand 25% of this, though I think I have some idea of Prynne's general project. coming from the wake of the changing economic/political paradigm, there is some sort of strange testimony. the contradiction between "dreamboats" & "what there is" along with the...
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