J. H. Prynne

[luka]

How these are gone into
sound by the back
larynx forced in
to a history
of rueful
masquerade with the poison gas
the flare rotten and I
cancel the magnum
am allayed by
where will we go
where will we be

 

[luka]

I wonder was he that smart at 33 or did he just keep getting smarter and smarter and smarter and if so can I keep getting smarter also

If you read the letters to Olson which I think were written in his 30s or even his 20s he is already a terrifying monster of the intellect.

 

[luka]

But I think we can get smarter and I think primarily it is a matter of the attention. If we can increase the attention span and intensify the focus we can still make progress

 

[luka]

It's very difficult for us now to attain the high seriousness of a Cambridge scholar I think. There's a professional seriousness there which as amateurs with lives to live is very very hard to feel inside and be guided by.

 

[luka]

It's an ethic of seriousness and respect for the material and the process

 

[luka]

To be even
over and lit in this far
under the face
turned for the while, turned
as the tile you
see how they perch as gulls do
too far to
go back and if
they know the way they
go they do
not ever earned

 

[luka]

But also because these freaks of the mind can read and process information more quickly than we can they have many many more years, in real terms, to work with. They literally have more time because their job is largely reading, they have more time because of the attention span and energy levels and they have more time because they work so much more quickly.

 

[luka]

So as
there is then we
are turned and spun
fetched as we have means
or do
not gasp by
the frail cloth
or the cloud before
rain uncalled
for caught by the eye
brow raising the hidden arm

 

[luka]

That's the whole thing. A night square from 1971

 

[shiels]

I think it's high time I started taking myself very seriously! Dedication and discipline is what's required at this stage of my life. and the impish and nihilistic saboteur needs the volume turned down, not completely, vital energy that, but needs shushed a wee bit

 

[luka]

The word linen is of West Germanic origin[3] and cognate to the Latin name for the flax plant, linum, and the earlier Greek λινόν (linón).

This word history has given rise to a number of other terms in English, most notably line

 

[luka]

I think it's high time I started taking myself very seriously! Dedication and discipline is what's required at this stage of my life. and the impish and nihilistic saboteur needs the volume turned down, not completely, vital energy that, but needs shushed a wee bit

That's definitely part of what I've got from engaging with Prynne. Not that I'm claiming to be serious or to have got any closer to that goal. But it's set up a kind of ideal on the edge of the horizon.

 

[luka]

There's 11 stanzas all of 11 lines. Except the one which isn't 11 lines.

 

[Corpsey]

I always feel like I had some of the raw materials needed to be very clever but I lacked e.g. the work ethic to ever pull it off. OTOH if I hadn't lacked those things I'd never have snorted crushed up pills and ketamine off a bar.

 

[luka]

The word linen is of West Germanic origin[3] and cognate to the Latin name for the flax plant, linum, and the earlier Greek λινόν (linón).

This word history has given rise to a number of other terms in English, most notably line

this notion of the line as movement is very important for Prynne, the spatiality and movement of the poem, and the dream bodies implied by that.

 

[luka]

the line is also the spine and our own uprightness.

 

[luka]

you can find some of the background to this in Heidegger.

"what the Roman grammarians designated by the colourless term modus was for the Greeks enklisis, inclination to the side."

"The words ptosis and enklisis mean falling, tipping, inclining. This implies a deviation from standing upright and straight. But this erect standing-there, coming-up, coming to stand and enduring is what the Greeks understood by being."

 

[luka]

there's a lot of talk on these matter in the letters Prynne was sending Olson although I'm not sure he brings Heidegger up there. I'll quote some bits later.

 

[luka]

i quoted, at some stage, somebody or other, i forget who, noting who Prynne often draws attention to the
downward movement of the poem, line by line as in the first stanza here

Now if you step down
into starlight you
are here with the cold hem
by the throat so
chill with linen
you gather you are so
falling you are

the correct formatting helps here but dissensus wont allow it but still you have the step down from
line one to line two and the falling
the descent of
the
poem.

 

[luka]

noun: ganglion; plural noun: ganglia; plural noun: ganglions

1. 1.
   Anatomy
   a structure containing a number of nerve cell bodies, typically linked by synapses, and often forming a swelling on a nerve fibre.
   • a network of cells forming a nerve centre in the nervous system of an invertebrate.
   • a well-defined mass of grey matter within the central nervous system.
2. 2.
   Medicine
   an abnormal benign swelling on a tendon sheath.
   

Origin

late 17th century: from Greek ganglion ‘tumour on or near sinews or tendons’, used by Galen to denote the complex nerve centres.