J. H. Prynne

[constant escape]

Hell, we could make the case that you're poised well, where you are - torn between the two.

Can we view the two as being complementary? Cooperative, rather than bloodthirstily adversarial? Or must it be bloodthirsty, for it to be productive? I'm not convinced it must be.

 

[version]

whats the title?

To Pollen. It's the one I linked you the other week. That's just the opening section.

https://www.barquepress.com/media/23/pdf/j_h_prynne_to_pollen.pdf

 

[constant escape]

I'm drawing a blank, reading the bit you just posted.

 

[version]

I'm drawing a blank, reading the bit you just posted.

See what I mean! It's like nothing I've read before.

 

[constant escape]

Sort of unsure what to cling to. Not even completely unsure - but unsure that I'm unsure.

 

[version]

This is how I described him a while back,

I think what makes it so difficult is that they're real words, they read like actual sentences, but they're just not in any order I've ever seen before. I feel like I'm being simultaneously pushed and pulled because it's encouraging me to read them as I would anything else, but they don't conform to a pattern that allows me to. With Finnegans Wake, there's a sort of musicality to it. With this, it's almost like reading an academic paper where all the words fell off the page and someone hurriedly stuck them back on wherever they could.

 

[constant escape]

My mind goes to: what must have been the psychic circumstances of the production of this text. Either A) it is beyond me, cognitively, or B) cognition isn't the means, at all, of reverse-engineering.

If it is designed to scramble, it is effective. And arguably a proper scrambling is an ideal effect to have on an interpreter. A scrambling that wipes away the momentum.

 

[constant escape]

Provided they can withstand it, like you.

 

[version]

Scrambling's a good term for it. It's like recieving coded messages via faulty radio equipment.

 

[linebaugh]

you gotta break down this shit at its most minute
lets start with ultramont.
What is ultramont?

 

[linebaugh]

-mont:
Etymology[edit]
From French -mont, from French mont (“hill, mountain”).

Suffix[edit]
-mont

1. Forming a placename or a surname derived therefrom and denoting or connoting a hill or mountain; sometimes (as in estate names) used more for euphony and connotation than for geomorphic denotation. Word formation in English using the suffix to name towns and family estates was most productive in the mid-19th through mid-20th centuries.

 

[pattycakes_]

How do you get on with luka's poetry, versh? After reading that pdf (first Prynne I've read) I now see how big of an influence it is. With luka's stuff, it was a case of let it wash over you, the words like sheets of formless texture streaming through your association receptors with the occasional piece of dry land to rest on to for a split second. You just let it happen

 

[linebaugh]

Im really struggling not to read 'So were intern' as 'So where in turn,' like my mind cant accept it

 

[constant escape]

Scrambling's a good term for it. It's like recieving coded messages via faulty radio equipment.

I would argue its even beyond that, like receiving noise, but fabricated noise, the point of which is to, as @pattycakes_ says, wash over you - the termination of signal, period.

That said, we can still try to learn from it, as if it did contain coded signal, in order to better understand how it has this effect.

Or does such an attempt merely undo the washing effect?

 

[version]

How do you get on with luka's poetry, versh? After reading that pdf (first Prynne I've read) I now see how big of an influence it is. With luka's stuff, it was a case of let it wash over you, the words like sheets of formless texture streaming through your association receptors with the occasional piece of dry land to rest on to for a split second. You just let it happen

Luka's stuff's more immediate for me. More fun. More colourful. Less cryptic. Although that might be partly because I've spent a couple of years talking to him and have some idea of his tastes, interests etc.

 

[version]

Im really struggling not to read 'So were intern' as 'So where in turn,' like my mind cant accept it

So were in turn.

 

[linebaugh]

So were in turn.

if you read 'intern' as confine, imprison, it makes sense with the rest of the line

 

[version]

The two epigraphs might prove useful,

Let my eyes see the sun and be sated with light.The darkness is hidden, how much light is there left? When may the dead see the rays of the sun?
Gilgamesh, Si i 13'-15'

Sometimes the field sprouts nails,so much does the field long for water.
The Pages of Day and Night

 

[constant escape]

Sometimes the field sprouts nails,so much does the field long for water.
The Pages of Day and Night

This, on the other hand, does seem to have a signal, and I just can't figure it out. A different kind of uncertainty, perhaps.

What does it mean to you?

 

[linebaugh]

I dont buy the washing over method with this stuff. In all my expereince with poetry this cryptic, your not really reading it until you take a very meta approach- grouping up like minded words, counting syllables, listing possible definitions and etc.

Not that you completely remove the wash effect - 'So were intern attach herded for ' feels great- but I just think its minor