J. H. Prynne

[luka]

wouldnt know were to start with those ones tbh.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I made a very little bit of progress with the first one if you go back a couple of pages, took me about an hour of reading it just to get that far though..
But I like them, there's a lot of cool words in them that are interesting to look up - lots of birds, sealife, plants. A lot of alliteration and rhyme, so it's probably mainly sound patterns that are holding them together, but I reckon spending time on them would reveal other associations of meaning.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Reading a bit of Parkland again, it might be the most beautiful thing he's written, I love the elegant, courtly atmosphere it creates.

 

[Benny Bunter]

BLUE WING TEN

Ascertained ambush outwash relish
density porous mince; creature parallel until
seepage necklace gainful entail barrel ants
assume queen, bone quarrel intrepid quoits.
Next up-winder silver porcupine radiant enjoy,
topmost gracious expert bowsprit assenting at
tree-creeper; availed quails eglantine frontis led
style ration portion, ambulant soaking labile
manoeuvre shilling abseil crocus dispersal, by
agreement serpentine gusto gravy upsprung.
Imprint foreign ternary goose track hissing on
upstairs knowledge necklace averse reduced
inevitable mafeking seascape hold tight old
pennyworth retrieval, enviable furious rutile or
fertile by gambol tudor succession reaction.
Tremulous eventual furrow merciful awed
lurid stentorian, inversion pilgrim capture
fortified, kite. Impression backward lettuce
arrested once purpose papoose raise heath
single entangle fair share, bravura or
bunion creed bassoon healing lentil
umbel heather warren undone trombone;
spelling umbrella evenly chimp stent in-
dubitable evening fast trial session own.
Triton Neptune fasten fortune steam run
engine easiest adjust serpent escapade at
wait, endurance meteorite pendent bright.
Fuse tracking ambidextrous addressed jib,
extraneous shadow trephined drainage,
silence pressure effort marigold pungent.
Rightful justice true aligned grained, lynx
pliancy infolded photon alliance yellow
dutiful central cathedral visible singed proverb.

 

[Benny Bunter]

There you go, that's the whole book - Front Obsidian Cobalt.

 

[yyaldrin]

Inshore Horizon

On line beside the sea quietly, once is enough
to match up to relish famous skies, the harbour
clear and evenly displayed. Flowers of sulphur,
salt caught in sunlight shone across dark lift
canopies, distant voices indistinct. In crest
service by turn boasted, take heed to look
and care, assume. Hedgerow follow; ever so
enough train through all together soft pleated
replied, wave in true best advice. So often,
so fine planted as many others face to hear
and be heard, ahead humid and wet. Simplified
relented, the path uphill vacant in shade,
colours merge to save in time to near win.
Honest bees better, buzz cherries call out
note and pick ripe, pitch perfect assiduous.

 

[sus]

theres lots of geography, geology, topography
in olson who directly teaches dorn and who is also
a major influence on prynne, early prynne in particular

Even before his trip to the Yucatán, archaeological references were slipping into Olson’s work. His poem “The Moebius Strip,” which was included in Y&X, features a “stone-henge plain.” In his 1949 poem “The Kingfishers” he wrote, “si j’ai du goût, ce n’est guères/que pour la terre et les pierres,” translated by Olson’s friend Robert Creeley as “If I have any taste, it is only for earth and stones.” The poem’s last line is the evocative and elegiac “I hunt among stones.” Among the Mayans’ stones, Olson hunted language.

 

[Benny Bunter]

He'll be 90 years old next year

 

[sus]

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.

 

[sus]

we are more pliant than the mercantile notion
of choice will determine-

 

[sus]

It's clearly influenced Prynne's Moon Poem too. "Quietly shining to the quiet moon" at the end there.

Been reading Moon poem every night before bed and copying it down. Incredible incredible incredible

 

[thirdform]

Been reading Moon poem every night before bed and copying it down. Incredible incredible incredible

when was the last time you killed a man?

 

[Benny Bunter]

Been reading Moon poem every night before bed and copying it down. Incredible incredible incredible

I love this one too, so beautiful - "bound in the rise and fall: learning to wish always for more"

Moon Poem
JH Prynne

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
to 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.

~ from White Stones (1969)

 

[Benny Bunter]

There was time when i thought I had a grip on what he was on about in these poems from the white stones, but every time i come back to them after time off it's like going back to square one. It's all to do with those recurring words in the book of 'wish' 'hope' 'choice' 'love' and 'home' - that lecture he did on Olson's Maximus is related too I think. But it's all so hard to piece together, and he abandons this more lyrical style soon afterwards anyway. Lovely while it lasted though.

 

[version]

I didn't really register any sort of meaning when I read it just now. What struck me was a sense of smoothness, like watching a water droplet gently snake down a surface.

 

[luka]

I generally thpught of it as staying up bare late wsiting for the world to get quiet... occupy the silence. Maybe write a bit

 

[Benny Bunter]

Yeah, it's the mood it creates that's the most important thing

 

[sus]

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

Rise and fall of breath but also the rise and fall of fortune and the way that such rising and falling is driven by the desire to rise ever-higher

Wishing always for more, desire never satiated, the Treadmill

Bound meaning not just "binded" but also leaping, headed, fate

I almost want to read it in a kind of quasi Exquisite Science way

That there is a of stability in the rising and falling—extension as stretching out as taking up ever more space conditions improving perhaps?

There is the fascist inbreath willpower exertion, and there is the surrender outbreath that releases you, and you are bound to the cycle

 

[sus]

The challenge is a
not a moral excitement, but the expanse,

the continuing patience
dilating into forms so
much more than compact.

I think this is perhaps about the settling into sleep, the "diffusion"—I think Olson uses that word too to refer to going to bed. Sleeping being a sort of dying, you dissolve and come apart--you are unbound. Rather than standing up you lie down. Rather than being contained in your bounds you spill out. Gravity turns you into a puddle, the dust scattters you etc

Settling into the miniature death that is sleep, allowing yourself to fall in the cycle so as to rise the next morning

But also I think perhaps more subtly it's the mental shift that comes with relaxation

The sort of patience, nongoaloriented, exploratory consciousness that you drift into when daydreaming or falling asleep, when you let your mind wander. It can go anywhere, let it spread out. Take the blinders off. Etc

 

[sus]

I think it can also be possibly read as being about ageing—youth as a compactness, and you dilate over a lifetime

Or perhaps it can be read as ars poetica—it's about a kind of breathing openness, airiness instead of cramped gemchiseled poems, the way the language of the poem itself feels very simple and relaxed and clear compared to most of his work