Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I wish would Prynne hurry up and put out that collection of his late stuff, if he doesn't get a move on it's gonna end up being posthumous.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
ABYSS : 2

At least given up for, cause loose in choke
let and leave both in the way marine inside
cash and crash, fast torment. Let for this
so casual flourish for spray passage sloop
younger by far all of say to know, going like
this granted no favour, affective turn a clip
in such want. Relic custodian leaving over
too ardent, too much as just so. Fluent ask
in grasp for air light wiling, hold the child
out first, our ransom list and lost bear this
plain enough. Not for frantic little from that
know this at brim cracked up in daylight pro-
file visible the cries distant lurk to chill
bet to know past hearing, amplitude wave narrow
crested at this driven. Below trace steerage
run out of doubt go down to it, to make sink or
swallow, past bearing out now, our guest limit
afforded to break, knowing so. In vital offer
detachment separable inexpensive all wasteful
across this shiny-bright horizon laid out.

JH Prynne.

Looks good that book. I saw this on twitter from the same one

 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Just read it again, so good.

Prynne's political/topical stuff is terrifying, I was reading Refuse Collection again the other day and listened to that recording of him reading it, so fierce. Still can't face reading To Pollen.

These abyss ones seem a lot more lyrical than that, maybe less angry, but you get such a vivid sense of the desperation and terror of the refugees from it.

"Fluent ask/ in grasp for air light wiling, hold the child/ out first, our ransom list and lost bear this/ plain enough"

"to make sink or swallow"
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Been tiptoeing around Whitman for a while now, never really that impressed with what I'd read but intrigued, but just read about half of Song of Myself today with a few beers and utterly blown away. I see a lot of @luka in this actually.
 
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Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Been reading some canonical American poets the last few days, trying to to get to grips with it and overcoming some prejudices.

Hart Crane - founded him really off-putting at first ( too many adverbs) but I really like Voyages now - ecstatic erotic nonsense.

Marianne Moore - Bit meh at first but the devil is in the detail and once you get what she's doing you realise it's really funny and ingenious. Love The Fish and Spenser's Ireland and will definitely check out more.

Robinson Jeffers - Robust, manly poetry about hawks and stuff (Whitman-esque) not fashionable nowadays but really, really good and powerful.

Robert Creeley - pales into insignificance compared to the above. Ditto William Carlos Williams and Robert Duncan. Not terrible but...

John Ashbery - can't make head nor tail of it, not sure where the appeal lies.

Charles Olson - very patchy. Going for an Ezra Pound thing but nowhere near as good. I like some though.

Ginsberg - I see those long, stoned rambling lines and my eyes glaze over.

Can we claim Pound, Eliot and H.D. for Europe?
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Just read some John Donne for the first time, I'd had the impression it would be really hard and boring but I couldn't have been more wrong

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes, upon one double string
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
It's a poem about two lovers souls becoming intertwined and mixed to create a new soul, but it's weird cos they remain separate as well in a way - cos they're also described as two equal armies who negotiate.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
It is a very complicated poem and I've only read it a couple of times but that quote I posted is basically two lovers gazing into each others eyes. It goes on to a lot more deeper stuff about the separation between the body and the soul, but I was just especially wowed by that particular image. Don't you think it good?
 

luka

Well-known member
dont understand it. donne is too convulted for me. cant be bothered with it. like fiddling with a knot in your shoelaces. fuck that.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
The opening of Narcissus by Delmore Schwartz

The mind is a city like London,
Smoky and populous: it is a capital
Like Rome, ruined and eternal,
Marked by the monuments which no one
Now remembers. For the mind, like Rome, contains
Catacombs, aqueducts, amphitheatres, palaces,
Churches and equestrian statues, fallen, broken or soiled.
The mind possesses and is possessed by all the ruins
Of every haunted, hunted generation’s celebration.
 
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