J. H. Prynne
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- 100 god damn pages butchering sontag cooking with propane corpsey why are you so thick deaths from bromo-dragonfly enjoy your journey enjoy! everyone! gravity bong happy to help! jamaican voodoo gang from predator 2 lads vs. dudes martin anus shaun from delaware stoned modernism teat. the albert ayler of the recorder the bee is the messiah the path clears by the use it gets thick as fuck to pollen traitor cow-juice west coast dudes
Benny Bunter
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Makes total sense. I think this is the closest you'll probably get to explaining why he writes the way he does.
Benny Bunter
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Obviously he's in dialogue with literature in other languages too, but the English language is so deep he doesn't even need to go there that much. There's enough in the OED to work with and 'translate'
Benny Bunter
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Wouldn't mind reading that
luka
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luka
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When links in text-cohesion are violated or cut
off, when extreme ambiguity displaces recognisable topic-focus, when
discourse levels and fields of reference are switched abruptly and without
sign-posts, these features may begin to comprise a second-order strat-
egy of pattern-making in a new way. Indeed, the use of rhyme-forms
in traditional English and also Chinese poetry may work like this, by
setting up delayed parallels of sound-effect that cross the boundaries of
sentence form and phrasal intactness. 17 In more modernist procedures,
threads of sound-relation and resemblance may likewise open links that
can jump across semantic space, activating the reader’s auditory memory
as a carrier of text-pattern.
For example, a switch of semantic field may seem locally disruptive in
the most extreme manner; but then the reader may observe some later
recurrence of the switched field that sets up a trace or thread, sometimes
obliquely or many lines later. This may be not meaning determining its
pattern of expression, so much as pattern and pattern-violation generat-
ing their own tendencies of meaning—or perhaps we should call this
“meaning”, in some second-order sense. I don’t think this is equivalent
to post-modernist playfulness, where meaning is allowed to skim across
a surface in a deliberately arbitrary way, because the use of difficulty as a
method of poetic thought is different both in intention and effect from
difficulty as a playground or a funfair
off, when extreme ambiguity displaces recognisable topic-focus, when
discourse levels and fields of reference are switched abruptly and without
sign-posts, these features may begin to comprise a second-order strat-
egy of pattern-making in a new way. Indeed, the use of rhyme-forms
in traditional English and also Chinese poetry may work like this, by
setting up delayed parallels of sound-effect that cross the boundaries of
sentence form and phrasal intactness. 17 In more modernist procedures,
threads of sound-relation and resemblance may likewise open links that
can jump across semantic space, activating the reader’s auditory memory
as a carrier of text-pattern.
For example, a switch of semantic field may seem locally disruptive in
the most extreme manner; but then the reader may observe some later
recurrence of the switched field that sets up a trace or thread, sometimes
obliquely or many lines later. This may be not meaning determining its
pattern of expression, so much as pattern and pattern-violation generat-
ing their own tendencies of meaning—or perhaps we should call this
“meaning”, in some second-order sense. I don’t think this is equivalent
to post-modernist playfulness, where meaning is allowed to skim across
a surface in a deliberately arbitrary way, because the use of difficulty as a
method of poetic thought is different both in intention and effect from
difficulty as a playground or a funfair
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Brilliant
This is why he instructed his Chinese translators to focus on translating the words themselves and not worry about the meanings.
This is why he instructed his Chinese translators to focus on translating the words themselves and not worry about the meanings.
Benny Bunter
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If that makes sense. Not attempting to translate overall meaning in context I mean, which might not have been there or was highly ambiguous in the first place.
Benny Bunter
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Of course, any act of creative writing is translation on some level - translation of thoughts and feelings, emotions etc into language. I think Prynne is unusually aware of this and what's more he wants to subvert it at a very deep level (violating the text-cohesion and making new patterns of 'sense' with sound effects/relations, as it says in that quote)
Benny Bunter
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That quote also ties in with what we were saying in the short poems thread about surrealism's flaw is it being arbitrary, mere novelty. (Though here he's talking about post modernism, but still)
"pattern and pattern-violation generating their own tendencies of meaning—or perhaps we should call this“ meaning”, in some second-order sense. I don’t think this is equivalent to post-modernist playfulness, where meaning is allowed to skim across a surface in a deliberately arbitrary way, because the use of difficulty as a method of poetic thought is different both in intention and effect from difficulty as a playground or a funfair."
"pattern and pattern-violation generating their own tendencies of meaning—or perhaps we should call this“ meaning”, in some second-order sense. I don’t think this is equivalent to post-modernist playfulness, where meaning is allowed to skim across a surface in a deliberately arbitrary way, because the use of difficulty as a method of poetic thought is different both in intention and effect from difficulty as a playground or a funfair."
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Benny Bunter
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So Prynne's stuff IS meaningful, just in some 'second order sense' as he says.
Benny Bunter
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Never tried it, I just had to translate mainly news articles and stuff, but I understand translating poetry is the hardest thing to do by far, a real art in itself
woops
is not like other people
shame it's still so difficult and hard to apply
woops
is not like other people
strictly for nerds, swots, etc
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
I suppose you have to be a massive dictionary nerd and have a huge memory
Benny Bunter
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I remember in the library at the sixth form I went to they had an OED displayed on a sort of plinth separate from all the other books, and no one was allowed to touch it