J. H. Prynne

Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Also been going through one of my phases of suspecting Literature and Art (anything with a capital A) is a big con job for pretentious ponce ppl and that Call of Duty and Skyrim are more fun.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
i dont understand what is difficult about auden either a lot of it is very lucid, precise prose, the rest of it rhymes
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
staring at a poem scratching your head and worrying about what it means isn't without value but it wouldnt be my first line of attack.

there's so much pleasure in the poem eg

"his wavy boots glow as he matches the headboard" makes me think of a curdled 70s mass market psychedelia, flares on blue peter,
top of the pops, groovy pop fonts like you still see on laundrettes
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
also makes me think of english middle class childhoods, children forced to tramp over moors in the drizzle, tour manor houses, and other improving activities, hiking boots, wet socks, moderate SW gales, weather
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I was lying in bed sunday morning trying to sleep but the mushrooms were still working and I was having intense hallucinations which weren't scary but kept me up – anyway, the relevant point here is that I was struggling to just experience the visions without interpreting them, and I found I couldn't stop myself from explaining to myself what I thought my brain was doing, and trying to control the visions too... It was quite depressing as I realised that my ability to just imagine things has been eroded by the instinct to interpret and explain. Instructive, in a way.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
luka said:
staring at a poem scratching your head and worrying about what it means isn't without value but it wouldnt be my first line of attack.

there's so much pleasure in the poem eg

"his wavy boots glow as he matches the headboard" makes me think of a curdled 70s mass market psychedelia, flares on blue peter,
top of the pops, groovy pop fonts like you still see on laundrettes
Click to expand...
It may all be about the spirit in which I approach poetry, which I think is probably "wrong".
 
woops

woops

is not like other people
What does it mean? That's an excellent question. What on earth does it mean? I don't know. I doubt Prynne himself could or would explain ("I think I'd probably walk out!"). No critic I've read can offer more than a guess or an arcane web of scholarly articles that are as enlightening as the guess. The point is that "What is he on about?" is one of the key effects of Prynne's writing. It's part of its mystery, and beauty. There's no continuity of sense - and yet it has its own weird continuity, and logic. To write well, even beautifully while making that little sense is not a small feat.
 
woops

woops

is not like other people
A patch
of wanting is not singing successfully,
the adverbs of a spate are too like, well,
écriture fatale.

Not a style or technique I've ever heard of, but what difference does that make? That "well" is funny, too, as if he can't put it properly in English.

If you're in a patch of wanting you are indeed unlikely to be singing successfully. Good to have that pointed out. The question a spate of what is an example of him reaching the limit of this kind of writing, where there's so little frame of reference you come completely unstuck- unless he means a spate of patches - but I'm trying to interpret him, see? Easy to fall into that trap
 
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