J. H. Prynne

[sus]

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

Kind of the poem's peak I think, or one of them. This one's kind of obvious. Neoliberalism and consent culture anticipated by Prynne half a century ago. The kind of simplistic moral vision and then the complex problems that result that make you realize we don't understand ourselvs or our desires half as well as we think

 

[sus]

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.
I think one thing that makes this poem feel easier or clearer is that he keeps coming back to the same words over and over so you can triangulate what he's saying. Here we get the diffusion again—that marine metaphor for sleeping, "drifting"—and its parallel metaphor for death—joining the great mother ocean, dissolving into the soup.

And also "choice." Complicating our notion of choice with habit and desire, and the way that our displayed actions run counter to our representaitons

 

[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.

All the paths not chosen

I like how "steppe" cues "ethic" to scan as "ethnic"—and then the contrast to "compact modern home," a kind of Scandinavian globalist makes-no-one-happy black metal modernism with glass, which is compact, ie not actually inclusive--which somehow has no space or room for diversity or ethnicity even as it claims the mantle of tolerance

 

[sus]

I dunno, some stabs, perhaps am totally wrong

Not really sure what he's getting at with all the ethics/morality/conduct stuff, and don't totally follow the three-line stanzas that alternate

 

[Benny Bunter]

They're good stabs I think. The good thing is that no one can say that you're wrong, so stab away!