luka

Well-known member
Prynne read the whole maximus poems in an afternoon http://charlesolson.org/Files/Prynnelecture1.htm


Now when, as I say, Maximus looks out to sea, he looks through the sea, down into the sea, out into the cosmos, we have the whole of Okeanos, we have the whole of the void, we have the whole of the condition of that circular curve to the condition of space. That circular curve is an important condition of the lyric, because the cosmos, in his sense, comprises the rearward time vector, back to the past, and all the space vectors extended until they go circular, that is to say, until you reach the ultimate curvature of the whole, so that they solve themselves into myth. That circular, that curving rhythm, the condition which you can finally reach to, is the condition of the cosmos where the cosmos becomes myth. That’s true about the scientific condition as well — that there is no doubt in my mind at all that the limits of space and the limits, for example, of absolute temperature, the curvature to which they attain, are all very closely isomorphic. So that, once that curvature is reached, the lyric concludes, and what takes over is the condition of myth.

The same is true in some implausibly grandiose way about the Miltonic narrative, in that his narrative has certainly no beginning. I mean, the beginning of time is a quite unreal concept. Similarly, the poem has no end. It is essentially a circular construct with a fault. The Maximus poem, not predicated on a theology, is a circular poem without a fault: that is to say, no Fall, no original sin — my god, plenty of other sin, but no original sin. The sin in Maximus is mostly a matter of wit, and humor, and which woman happens to be within the ambience of which particular phraseology at any one time.

a coast

is not the same

as land

he said.

the world

is an eternal

event

he says.

I have had to learn the simplest things

last. Which made for difficulties.

Even at sea I was slow, to get the land out, or to cross

a wet deck.

The sea was not, finally, my trade.

But even my trade, at it, I stood estranged

from that which was most familiar. Was delayed,

and not content with the man’s argument

that such postponment

is now the nature of

obedience,

that we are all late

in a slow time,

that we grow up many

And the single

is not easily

known

That’s got to be from the first Maximus. “I stood estranged from that which was most familiar”: that’s a man looking out to sea. And how does a man standing on his particular piece of coastline, which is not the same as land, know what the land is? And by land I do not mean that superficial notion of terrain, but the whole compact history of the planet. How does he know that? There is only one place you can see that from and that is from the curvature of the limits. The local technique, the local trick for seeing it is for doing it by the delicate inversions of the lyric. The larger, more extended, more sophisticated approach to have that whole is to go right out to the curve, right round, and then from that focus, from the burning glass of the whole round of the far side, then you find you truly were estranged from that which was most familiar. What was most familiar? What was most familiar was home. And what is home? Home is the planet on which you live. Nowhere have I been more struck, oh more passionately struck by the notion that the planet, the whole globe, the earth upon which we live, is home to us. There was that unbelievably gross photograph of the earth taken across the surface of the moon, which is now in all the soap ads, which was supposedly the first picture of earth as home. My god, the stunning alienation of that piece of sentimental whimsy disguised as hatred was unbelievable. We have to go to the exactness and completeness of poetry to tell us what such a condition of home would be like. And if you want it in its largest sense, you have to go the largest distance from it in order to come right back round to take it in at one sweep. That condition of home, as I say, is quite stunning. When the German metaphysician Heidegger was trying to get himself straight with the poems of Holderlin, the German Hellenic lyric poet, the great mage of that nineteenth century German presence, he seized onto the phrase, “poetically man dwells on this earth”; and he ponders it, and he turns it round, and he’s asking himself what is the condition of being that makes it possible for man to be at home on the earth. Well, nothing, nothing in your lyric set-up will allow you to be at home on the earth. You could be at home in, oh, some cozy little piece of North Alberta. That’s entirely permissible. You could be at home in some, oh, the ranch back in Kansas, gee, it was great. But to be at home in that larger sense is not permitted to the lyric. It is permitted only to the great epic performances: and what’s more, to the great epic performances that can carry across that distance, and which you can carry with: that’s to say, the obscure epic.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
thats not why i think he's a blowhard thats just corroborating evidence. im quite tired and quite hungover at the moment

You know I think poetry has come to the end of the line in terms of lineage and development and that it also has no real social or cultural function any more to make up for that. That is partly why I have no patience for Prynne composing abstruse word games for tiny print runs or the game that Prynne fans like to play by striving to join semantic dots or squeeze out lexical patterns. It seems so sterile to me.

But the poems that Gaby Roslin posted on her Instagram account or a couple from New York painted on the wall over their bed is more important to me than the constructions of Prynne or the pointless puffery of the Faber roster because however banal you think those poems are you musn't forget that they are a form of modernist free verse and have actually played an active part in imaginations and lives and created a completely new functional and ceremonial space for poetry. I actually find it really impressive and moving.
 

luka

Well-known member
There is something concrete in his project that I can intuitively grasp
what cut deepest for me was sense of place, the gulls, the stink of fish, the fishermans huts
and also the atlantic, the cod fishers pushing off from Cornwall, Ireland, Portugal, the whalers,
the slavers, the trade circuits and trade winds, that geographic bloc
 

craner

Beast of Burden
what cut deepest for me was sense of place, the gulls, the stink of fish, the fishermans huts
and also the atlantic, the cod fishers pushing off from Cornwall, Ireland, Portugal, the whalers,
the slavers, the trade circuits and trade winds, that geographic bloc

Yes, that's what I mean and what I remember. Also the magnitude of the parochial and daily details.
 

luka

Well-known member
i really got a sense of what Olson is about when i was doing my Poplar project (which you scoffed at mercilessly!)
 

woops

is not like other people
You know I think poetry has come to the end of the line in terms of lineage and development and that it also has no real social or cultural function any more to make up for that. That is partly why I have no patience for Prynne composing abstruse word games for tiny print runs or the game that Prynne fans like to play by striving to join semantic dots or squeeze out lexical patterns. It seems so sterile to me.
bah you sound like my mate who said english poetry started with chaucer and came to an end with eliot. that's missing out on dorn, olson, creeley, prynne etc plus loads more. "abstruse word games for tiny print runs" is just a snob take i'll ignore that.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
bah you sound like my mate who said english poetry started with chaucer and came to an end with eliot. that's missing out on dorn, olson, creeley, prynne etc plus loads more. "abstruse word games for tiny print runs" is just a snob take i'll ignore that.

Truth hurts Edmundo.
 
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