Reason the lake-pit
.
Never.
Never.
Never, alas.
Never work – alas.
Never work. Alas – gilt gems.
Never work – alas, be hung with gilt gems.
Never work. At reason, alas. Be hung with gilt gems, until skulking thereafter.
Never work at reason – alas, you shall again be hung with gilt, until skulking behind morgues and often hidden gems thereafter.
Never work at reason – alas, you shall again be hung with gilt, until skulking behind morgues and often hidden gems, there shall be no mitigation thereafter. There shall be no mitigation thereafter. Hunger lagged.
Never work at reason – alas, you shall again be hung with gilt, until skulking behind morgues and often hidden gems, there shall be no mitigation thereafter. Some tidings shall languish; there shall be no mitigation thereafter. Hunger lagged on the gravel, whirling in regret; skate on over the lake-pit, there to lurch under the rocks.
Never work at reason – alas, you shall again be hung with gilt, until skulking behind morgues and often hidden gems, there shall be no mitigation thereafter. Some tidings shall languish; there shall be no mitigation thereafter. Hunger lagged on the gravel, whirling in a sack that refused it, gilded itself in regret; hunger, hunger, come, sigh at altitudes, sift behind desks, hand over fodder from the store, and skate on, on over the lake-pit of vipers and geckos, there to lurch under the rocks. Hunger, make a den beneath.
Never work at reason – alas, you shall again be hung with gilt, until skulking behind morgues and often hidden gems, there shall be no mitigation thereafter. Some tidings shall languish; there shall be no mitigation thereafter. Hunger lagged on the gravel, whirling in a sack that refused it, gilded itself in regret; hunger, hunger, come, sigh at altitudes, sift behind desks, hand over fodder from the store, and skate on, on over the lake-pit of vipers and geckos, there to lurch under the rocks. Hunger, skate on, make a den for yourself beneath the ice. Hunger, skate without end in sight, hand over nothing and never parody sans serif. Dash skittishly amid the henchmen of the nearby gardens, these too hung with gilt. Some tidings are once more tugging towards a den; solemn in its lull, it observes as a brown hind shoots past.
Never work at reason – alas, you shall again be hung with gilt, until skulking behind morgues and often hidden gems, there shall be no mitigation thereafter. Some tidings shall languish; there shall be no mitigation thereafter. Hunger lagged, whirling in a sack that refused it, gilded itself in regret; hunger, hunger, come, sigh, sift behind desks, hand over fodder from the store, and skate on, on over the lake-pit of vipers and geckos. Hunger, skate on, make a den for yourself beneath the ice. It is the task of scholars to hang out on the edge above soldered skulls, or dash skittishly amid the henchmen of the nearby gardens, these too hung with gilt. Some tidings are once more tugging towards a den; it observes as a brown hind shoots past and skits across the viper lake-pit, tugging at hunger, as hunters with tusks, hunters who track its den, blend carefully among the flotsam of the viper pit. Pave over flotsam, for by the setting of the ink this dirt remains unachieved. Gross handlers of the earth! Halt your tidings, in case a motley crowd more able than you stand beneath a Batik sin. Hear the descant. The light touching. Mankind skates past like ice. Bleeds wherever. That is hell alike for the Blood Guild. Man at fault. The Flame. Cut through reason. Contradict. ‘Reason! Reason lives!’ Hurry. Striving, singing. The angels alone.
Never work at reason – you shall again be hung with gilt, until skulking behind morgues, there shall be no mitigation thereafter, whirling in a sack that refused it, gilded itself in regret; hunger, hunger, come, sigh at altitudes, sift behind desks, hand over fodder, and skate on, on over the lake-pit of vipers and geckos, there to lurch under the rocks. Hunger, skate on, make a den for yourself beneath the ice. Hunger, skate without end in sight, hand over nothing and never parody sans serif. Hang out on the edge above soldered skulls, or dash skittishly amid the henchmen of the nearby gardens. Some tidings are once more tugging towards a den, a trapped den surviving after the siege; it observes as a brown hind shoots past and skits across the viper lake-pit, tugging at hunger, as hunters with tusks, hunters who track its den, blend carefully among the flotsam of the viper pit. The setting ink remains unachieved. Gross handlers of the earth! A Batik sin, which is foresworn against petted cats and the hand of reason right up to the spur of the moment, and ever after that. Alike for the Blood Guild, that species of man at fault, for they gave the world the Flame, though saddest hopes never thought of it. So steamed the falling hand. Some tidings stand to contradict this, singing in chorus: ‘Reason lives! Reason lives!’ Reason skates legally above the rabble. Some hurry nearer to the source like sieves blowing for metre upon metre, striving to hover over the singing quartet. Men hue their blood red just to find the meaning of ‘Hail! Life!’ and track each other over laboured cliff tops, each man skating, skating to free himself from tender homage. ‘Cease!’ sing the men, wending their botched way to the altar. At the last stile, the slaughtered heifers up rise, skinned of vitality, mangy things of omen. Hugged decades give up. Give them everything. Now men have another sinning skillet. Men hunger like whirling gravel, like flotsam sacrificed. Knifing, the heart consumes itself. No one has extorted for nothing, forfeiting delight; the kind one has after escaping the sand and sea that pass a man by, the angels alone, men sagging and saddened with old age.
Sunday, 5 July 2009
Katie Allen: Reason the lake-pit
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Marjorie Perloff @ Warwick
She read from a chapter in her forthcoming book, 'Unoriginal Genius', primarily on the theme of multi-language poetry, then (modernism) and now (but she didn't call it postmodernism - presumably because she agrees with all sensible people, that postmodernism doesn't exist). The discussions centred on Eliot and Pound in relation to Caroline Bergvall and Yuko Tawada.
===
I'm going start at the end, in the Q&A session. This is where the most intellectual juice happened for me, during the event (though as a whole the talk and discussion afterwards was wonderful). A couple of times Marjorie invoked Eliot's mission statement of "purifying the language of the tribes", which I've found fairly unpalatable for the various atrocity-related interpretations placed upon the notion of finding 'purity' across the 20thC. Not that the phrase, and Eliot, should be thrown out with the bath water, of course.
In any case, what with the oft-noted backlash against Eliot and his grandiloquising, for reasons of perceived elitism, snobbery and prejudice, it seemed logical to ask if there was a new project: to corrupt the language of the tribes. Marjorie's answer completely surprised and delighted me:
That mainstream poetry's mission continues to corrupt the idea of natural speech in poetry. Reading Philip Larkin, for all his poetry's apparent popularity in Britain, is to encounter a language that sounds so detached from everyday speech, "flat" and unnatural, as to be exclusive, discordant and, ultimately, elitist, as to be immediate evidence for the ongoing need for Project Purity (sorry, couldn't help the Fallout 3 reference there). Poetry's counter-culture continues to find itself up against a ring of words fencing out the marginal from an equal footing in artistic expression.
This division exists across various 'types' of poetry - performance, page, etc. Compare Linton Kwesi Johnson & John Hegley. Compare Jennifer L Knox & Maya Angelou. Compare Carol Ann Duffy & Elisabeth Bletsoe. Compare Fiona Sampson & Jen Hadfield. Compare WN Herbert to Don Paterson. There's not necessarily a right answer in each of these, in terms of which poet comes closer to a 'natural' diction, but where local dialect features heavily, it's clear there's a political decision being made to democratise the language.
Marjorie's argument highlighted the ongoing hypocrisy of mainstream poetry and criticism of: just as there is no such thing as a 'neutral accent' (as with the BBC's RP, or the notion of Queen's Engerlish as rate arnd pro/per pronunseeashone), yet again there's been a hoodwinking taking place in poetic diction. The modernists didn't detach language from everyday speech, raising it to an elitist level. the words they chose, the way they used language, was about re-attaching poetry to society, widening the scope of real dialects visible in art (though see the notes below - some of Eliot's usage was problematic in comparison to, e.g. Pound's).
The main conflict between modernism's innovations and traditional poetry was, as with the Romantics, the creeping in of street slang, irregular, everyday rhythms, as compared to 'composing with a metronome.' This is even more visible overseas, e.g. in Greece, where the modernist mission was to overthrow katharevousa or 'high Greek', a language used almost exclusively as officialese, in newspapers, etc. The demotic was shoehorned into art by poets like Seferis (taking cue from Cavafis), and faced far greater backlash from the higher social strata than Eliot & Pound did in the UK. But this was a democratising act, allowing more people greater access to poetry - a poetry that they could associate with, understand more freely - and to poetic language, as new poetry incorporated common dialects, a greater understanding of what poetry could be, into its repertoire.
So the idea of corruption in language, at least for Marjorie, is related directly to the range, pluralism, and democratic representation of a wide, multicultural (not merely in the sense it means today, but in the wider sense of a range of cultural tastes and activities, from jazz to hiphop to opera to football chants) society. Pound's Cantos are far more successful projects at representing a diverse society than that of the elitist Victorian metronome, which could probably incorporate only a single social demographic at a time should it choose to, with its tub-thumping, one that had adjusted its brain patterns to fit the regularity of the language in order to identify the commoner (compare to Marjorie's discussion of shibboleths later on).
Having laid this all out, I'm going to disagree partially, insofar as I feel that corruption is no bad thing, to some extent. A little bit of magic, from a creative perspective (rather than Marjorie's critical perspective) is essential to stepping outside of tradition, finding ways to reconstruct language to meet our capacity for reflective thought about a society that will always change faster than language can. The cycle must include an element of rot, a phase of decomposition, before the new can emerge. (OK, that makes me sound like a hippy. But that's OK too. Simon would only chastise me if I said I wasn't one.)
This reconstruction requires a value system in order to demonstrate longevity (see at the end of the notes, below, Marjorie's response to Nick Lawrence on the idea of the fad of random, or highly disparate associative critical processes). Pluralism in some cases can come across as a highly subjective anti-value system that's put across by a mainstream aesthetic as a cover for an absence of critical standards, or, arguably, quality of the primary text. Witness a recent TS Eliot lecture, for example.
===
What follows is a series of my journal notes during the lecture, and the Q&A, tempered for readability and interspersed with [my thoughts now]. Snippets in quotation marks were recorded from Marjorie verbatim.
The ideograms of the Western alphabet - Yuko Tawada.
[I was dumb about the ideogrammatic nature of the Western alphabet up to this point. I vaguely remember some story about a C being like the mouth of a carp, but this may be misremembered from a Kipling story.]
Modernist multilanguage is about lending an exoticism to the poetry - even English citations are equally aimed to build the mysterious aura: e.g. why did TSE take the King James Bible version of Biblical quotations, not the Hebrew/Greek? But elsewhere in The Waste Land - Parsifal, etc. - he goes to earlier languages to tell the story, as if he's simply showing off.
Whereas 4Quartets is almost all in English. Why? TSE's collaging was less purposeful - about 'effects/FX', whereas Pound knits, weaves, shows history. Cantos = "proto-hypertextual poem."
Pound uses elements unique to not just the languages, but to the geographical origins & also class status, e.g. quoting var. slang: French argot and regional Spanish phrases; English also.
[I'd always suspected Eliot of being the lesser of two modernists, though Pound is vocally more politicised, more decision-making and, arguably, the sloppier poet and thinker on a number of fronts, this is also the thing that reveals (for me) his humanity. He has opinion, he's a shit, but opinion is what makes us human.
This might be a forgiving, 'I'm of the Mediterranean diaspora too' mentality. But at the same time, I love The Waste Land, Prufrock - Eliot's various 'stadium poems' - for the isolated beauty and/or punch of certain lines. The Cantos, however, exist as full units, full entities of poetry, slabs that can't be broken down into wonderful units. The idea of the Cantos is almost more important to language and literature than the actual content.]
And in Caroline Bergvall - 'Via' --> cento. A sequence of alphabetical opening lines of Dante - first tercet sequenced, English translations. Demonstrates the impossible & inevitable nature of translation. In Bergvall's Fig collection (Salt) and also at her website.
Her nuance of linguistic/multilanguage play is to examine the political borders of xenia - e.g. shibboleths: words used to identify foreigners. E.g. Japanese 'r' and 'l'.
[As the sounds are effectively both an 'l', aurally, this leads to cultural stereotyping of pronunciation: 'flied lice' and so on.]
[CB's poem] 'Parsley' is a response to late night TV racism based on linguistic difference. The poem was presented as an exhibition installation, and also on her website. [The idea is to highlight the difficulty in writing language down as it is said.] An investigation into how we process language.
There's a deliberate push of 'r' and 'l' to trouble the reader/listener. A discrepancy in eye/ear meaning. What does this mean for performed poetry? It's both exclusive - linguistically politicised - and popularising for the locale.
Tawada - Exophony. Turning linguistic otherness to political strength. (Also, words for 'to translate', e.g. in German/Japanese, are metaphors - to cross by boat / to turn over.)
What does this mean for dictionaries? For the lack of education using the phonetic alphabet? Or phonetic language generally?
"The clouds put on trousers when they go to Russia."
The crowds put on Toulousers when they go to Lusher.
There are problems with the invention of zero - a word pushes forward to represent something as a politically nuanced act. What happens when something new occurs? Or something changes? Or the powerful wish to change the understanding of something by reinflecting its meaning?
The length of words relating to status - what about poems only using words longer than 8 letters?
"An elephant cannot be an adjective."
[What about as a verb?]
I elephanted the vodka; it burned my nostrils.
I elephanted through the undergrowth, saplings bursting into matchsticks.
[Philip Larkin]: The nothing that is, or isn't? Recessive (as in genetic) language and ideas? The continuing complexity of relations & inter-relations. Is the fear of Pandemonium still valid?
Q&A
"The absorption of culture must be linguistic as well as thematic."
and:
"Poetry goes beyond communication."
So dictionaries become tools of communication and will therefore be temporal, ephemeral, in need of updating. I heard students in the changing rooms today describing someone as 'hench' - well-built? Heavily muscular?
[Coming back to actual notes on the 'corrupting the language' question:]
But perhaps - MP: the contemporary mainstrea is corrupting language by forumlating. Or rap/performance (Douglas Tierney).
Mongrelism - the idea of language as hybrid, falling away from poetry.
Translation also debases - the sense of poetry is what is lost in ~. Some things can't be, are ruined by, or deliver only a sense of the thing: you need to learn the original language. Even simply hearing the original can be powerful, empowering of the text.
The distance between types of English. Donald Davie has said he can't 'hear' William Carlos Williams. MP says she can't 'hear' Philip Larkin - HOORAY! It's just flat.
Canadian - esp. French - English: Erin Mouré, etc. o e i - Scandinavia - also mipoesia (new poetry). These are multilingual, trilingual, but there's no further need (esp. for the English) to really learn a language beyond English.
3 versions of Frank O'Hara's 'Is it Dirty?' on Youtube. "The great resource of the internet." Woohoo.
[The last part of the discussion revolved around the idea of democratic critical assessment of texts, or 'equal valuation' across boundaries, to which Marjorie said something along the lines of (pardon the paraphrase):]
Valuing the text used for an example: what is the value system? Should it be explicit? Fuck zeitgeist and fuck Franco Moretti.
[Yes, that was major shorthand for a much longer and far more intelligent discussion that took place between Nick Lawrence and Marjorie. I.e. there needs to be a value system for all cultural appreciation and it needs to be explicit. Pluralism is all well and good, as long as you can identify reasons for quality across boundaries. There is good and bad writing, however you want to classify that writing into a 'camp', a school, or whatever. If your standards in one area of writing (e.g. traditional British post-war Movement-style poetry) aim to celebrate one factor (e.g. rhythmic regularity alongside flat language and an anally retentive emotional control, with a bit of swearing thrown in), can that sit alongside a love for another area of language (e.g. open field poetics)? Yeah. Probably. But it would need a fair bit of explaining.]
Monday, 29 June 2009
Nathan Thompson - the day maybe died
the day maybe died
running out on the new book half way through you deal
faces these are blue days blues ‘I wish we was (I were) in St Malo’
or wherever I’m not sure this is not
so illogical as it sounds today land’s never mind
considering the where you are where I am factor of the situation
at first I too had intended harmony like a huge ‘O’ but I seem to have
finished early ‘the bad break is hardest to mend’
no shit
and the criminal loops his smooth fingers
about a tree it is all too tall and obvious
how about a short tomato what’s the difference?
the difference is my face is empty as a rotten microscope
waiting for something really big to get my teeth into
‘is it your bank or another one?’ I don’t have the heart
too many questions
I’m not really interested in the intricate yesterdays of a talking horse
give me the down to turf derby every time laugh to win
bubbles (10-1) at Ascot ‘is it really possible to go anywhere with ladybirds?’
you may well ask
we rose too early this morning to do things the way we intended
work was out the exercise bike of broken images had flown away with itself
making a mockery of my lit cigarette the moon in which
future rooks are roosting their eyes quail like eggs in the walked crooks
of their hands
‘is nothing sacred?’ ‘dear teddy-bear Joe: no’ it’s not as if
it’s only you who is tasteless energy sleeps south of your thrilling paws
clubbed together for a glass of sangria I offered but a bottle of Raymond
was what was needed not quite celebratory coverage but celebrity ladies wear
in a shop window Jacques Brel style
the effortlessness of your impossible health
is frustrating sure you can sing but can you dance
the king of Pepsi duffed up outside court opens his white arms
like an uncharitable disease with soft spots for everyone
soon we’ll be talking notes too many questions
are out of the question hair trigger reactions blue looks
‘dear Frank (you’re fired)
what do you make of all this’ but you’re having a coke with the wrong sponsor
the burgers are on bald Elvis green eyed in Hawaii
25-26 June 2009
Friday, 26 June 2009
Two poems by bani haykal
from adsurbism
#01
decidedly, the staples unbuttoned
unscrambles together the purpose
trudgingalong our methodologies breathing
towards the corridors where perceptions
are mimicked to profess in metaphors
for betterments hidden in puzzle boxes.
whata sentence whata sentence what
a sentence. unstructured; tongues
bloom into music kissing lip gloss
bright in the afternoon sun, as we stand
to pretend caring, catching bites whilst spitting
plastic into cans, bring the legs and make them
taste sweetly in unison to the satisfying sigh
called relief.
who standsbaffled to the
acoustic moon violently marooning the clumsy
thinker washing his face in dull cinema
called care? i certainly don't, i certainly
don't; intend to pretend
is a phrase used in a sentence, a sentence
whata sentence, breathing life only seconds
to comatose relief because friends, friends,
friends, friends, friends :
undecidedly
my buttons scrambled a purpose
a purpose i call life
and an open call to death
is default payment we cash
in every puzzling month.
#03
prior
to this nested atrium farming brain
cancer, each sunrise was mad
beautiful. a harbor for a balcony, a bed
for a suitcase, toasts for table scraps and
red bloom kisses
for fumes and hard
trucks rushing through. gravity restless
blushing.
no
order to restrain a m i c r o s c o p i c
perception of joy. restless illumination
meandering / undulating and i bask soaking;
crooning. killjoy marooned.
killjoy.
bluffed out intermission
paused ;
through curtains in a headfuck
gunpoint victim crouching to
meticulous bipolarity called life. ours
was a curve; bending
in unison to song; swoop in
betweening cradle and tongue, and
poof ; brain cancer. in
depth of pinches
fractured, post-giddy headache
b l o o m to footsteps of f cue.
==
bani haykal is from Singapore. You can read more of his work at misinterpretings, or at the adsurbisms microsite, which also has #01 as a pdf and as audio. bani is also part of the mux collective and the B-Quartet.
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Katie Allen: Decomposition
Decomposition
.
Roses.
Roses.
Roses erupt.
Roses. Brother, erupt.
Only roses, brother. Well-loved, erupt.
Only roses. The brother. Well-loved, goose bumps erupt.
Only at night. Roses; the summer. The brother is well-loved. Goose bumps erupt.
Only at night – roses. The summer, the brother. Watching the girl. She is well-loved. Goose bumps erupt. Her eyes open, limpid.
Only at night. The roses, the summer. The brother watching the girl. She is beautiful, well-loved, quiet. Goose bumps erupt. Anything to preserve a moment – her eyes open after a while. Limpid, he thinks.
Only really noticeable at night, the roses. The summer on the patio. The brother, drumming his fingers, watching the girl. She is beautiful, well-loved, quiet. It is morning. Goose bumps erupt on the man’s arms. Anything to preserve a moment – her eyes open after a while, as ever. Limpid, he thinks of their shared nights.
The orchids – a luminescence, only really noticeable at night. A week later, all the roses. In the house, the summer. On the patio, the brother, drumming his fingers, watching the girl. She is beautiful, well-loved. Those slender fingers. Quiet. It is early morning. She reminds him that he knows. The girl falls. Goose bumps erupt on the man’s arms. She drifts. Anything to preserve a moment – her eyes open after a while. He watches (as ever, he thinks). Limpid, he thinks of their shared nights. Later, he found roses.
One evening, the orchids acquired a luminescence, only really noticeable at night. Then, a week later, all the roses. They had been in the house. The summer on the patio. The brother, drumming his fingers, watching the girl. She is beautiful, certainly. One can only assume well-loved. Those slender fingers. He considers making a statement, but keeps quiet. It is early morning. She reminds him, in that house surrounded by roses: he is a bad hand of cards to be dealt to anyone. He knows it. Inevitably, the girl falls. Goose bumps erupt on the man’s arms. She drifts. Resurface. Anything to preserve a moment – her eyes open after a while. He watches (as ever, he thinks, in self-disgust). Limpid, he thinks again of that other girl, of their shared nights. He had dissuaded her – successfully, he’d thought. Later, he had found rotting roses.
It began one evening when the orchids in the conservatory acquired a luminescence, only really noticeable at night. Then, a week later, all the roses. The next day they had grown back, all of them much larger. They had been previously in the house. Signs started appearing on doors. The summer on the patio. The brother, drumming his fingers, watching the girl on the diving board. She is beautiful, certainly. One can only assume well-loved, with humiliated hearts dripping from those slender fingers. He considers making a statement, but keeps quiet. It is early morning. She reminds him of the other girl, back in that house surrounded by roses. He is a bad hand of cards to be dealt to anyone, now. He knows it, so do they. Inevitably, the girl falls from the ledge. Goose bumps erupt on the man’s arms. She drifts, making no move to resurface. Anything to preserve a moment – her eyes open after a while. He watches (as ever, he thinks, in self-disgust) from the sidelines. He could leap in after her, haul her towards the shallow end like a disappointing catch. But he does not. He knows she will not. The oxygen in her lungs. Limpid, he thinks again of that other girl, of their shared nights. He had dissuaded her – successfully, he’d thought. Foolish. Two days later he had found rotting roses, the colour of rust.
It began one evening when the orchids in the conservatory acquired a pallid luminescence, only really noticeable at night. Then, a week later, all the roses died. The next day they had grown back, all of them sickly white and much larger than they had been previously. In the house, signs started appearing on doors that hadn’t been there before. Not the signs, not the doors. The summer guests grew nervous, and increasingly, lost. On the patio, the brother sipped tea and watched events flower open, drumming his fingers as he does now, watching the girl on the diving board. She is beautiful, certainly. One can only assume that she is well-loved, with more than her fair share of humiliated hearts dripping from those slender fingers. The white of her swimming costume makes a statement against the turquoise tiles. He considers making a statement himself, but keeps quiet. It is early morning. She reminds him of the other girl he tried to save all those years ago, back in that house surrounded by roses, back when he was a different person. A better person, most would agree. He is a bad hand of cards to be dealt to anyone, now. He knows it, so do they. Inevitably, the girl falls from the ledge. As she plunges into the chilled water, goose bumps erupt on the man’s arms. She drifts along the bottom, making no move to resurface. Does chlorine do anything to preserve corpses? he wonders for a moment. Will she die with her eyes open? Will the chlorine dissolve them after a while? He watches (as ever, he thinks, in self-disgust) from the sidelines. He could leap in after her, haul her towards the shallow end like a disappointing catch. But he does not. He knows she will not die this way. The oxygen in her lungs refuses such limpid suicide. He thinks again of that other girl, of their shared cups of tea on the patio, of their shared nights. The horrors of that house coming between them, her escalating despair. The cyanide attempt. Just her cup, of course. He had dissuaded her – successfully, he’d thought. Foolish. Two days later he had found her rotting among the new roses, her eyes the colour of rust.
Monday, 22 June 2009
A Madness of Utterance: A Prynnetroduction
George Ttoouli reacts to A Manner of Utterance: The Poetry of J.H. Prynne, ed. Ian Brinton, (Shearsman, 2009) pp. 188, £12.95
Ian Friend & Richard Humphries in dialogue on JHP:
"IF: Prynne has always impressed me with the diversity of his language and sources--it's a trademark I suppose. It can read very lyrically at times, particularly for me in 'The Oval Window', but at other times it is fractured or dislocated and without any traditional beauty to it. Often it makes one work very hard, but I don't mind that at all. I don't mind art being difficult and contradictory, so I suppose I can transfer that attitude to visual art and to my own work.
RH: Can you say a bit more about enjoying art being 'hard'?
IF: Maybe 'hard' is the wrong word. Perhaps 'multi-layered' or 'complex' are more appropriate. I don't like to get the 'story' straightaway. Having said that, I'm certainly not in favour of narrative in art."
This seems an important distinction to me: the initial response to Prynne as 'hard', is like saying, "This poetry is like double differential equations, or particle physics, or baking a wedding cake in one sitting, or fixing the engine on a Harrier." Whereas describing the work as multi-layered, or complex, means you can, if you choose, treat it one step at a time.
The responses to Prynne's poetry in this collection of essays is interesting, for the fact that they range from people who have taken several steps through the layers of Prynne's work, to those who have stopped on a particular layer to draw inferences about the whole. My favourite responses are Ian Friend's and Eric Ulman's, both of which take alternative artistic media (visual art and music, respectively) as parallels for understanding Prynne's poetry.
Ian Friend once again:
"I like the density in Prynne's poetry. One is simply aware of a profound intelligence at work. I feel that I am in the presence of an inquiring mind, someone with a curiosity and understanding of a wide range of experience and disciplines. I don't pretend to be in that league intellectually or academically, but I'd like to think that my work is the product of an inquiring and intelligent approach that understands the ramifications of knowledge and in particular of the history and methods and materials of my craft. That sense of inquiry in Prynne urges me on."
So the book becomes a statement not just about poetry, about Prynne's poetry, but something more important: artistic and readership practices, decision-making, self-awareness, motivation. It's life-affirming, mission-affirming. 'This is why I read.' 'This is why I create.'
Eric Ulman:
"Prynne's poetry seems to me exemplary, of a rare fullness and invention. My initial encounters with it have often baffled me, and there are many sequences into which I have as yet only rudimentary insight; but my imperfect understanding mutes neither his work's immediate nor more gradual power. Few poets use language--as sound, as social fact, as historical object, as representation, as manifestation--with such thoroughness and agility. Prynne's works invite and endure exacting attention, in Empson's words, "with undiminished reputation." If much Language poetry takes modernist achievement into a realm of diminishing returns--the complacent impenetrability of a mere 'free play' of surfaces, or the repetitive exposure of the emptiness of social tropes, the poetic 'mainstream' in England and America is striking for the vacuity of its rhetoric and technique. Prynne avoids both culs-de-sac."
What he said, but louder, on every billboard in the country (and OK, I guess, edited into bitesize chunks). Isn't this the point? Once you're aware of the depth of experience you can pass through, as a reader, in certain texts, doesn't that suck the life out of so many other writings? And not merely in terms of the 'camps', types of writing. This is a challenge to the writers of experimental and traditional poetry, prose, whatever: why have you set the bar where you have, in terms of complexity, simplicity, layers of meaning, etc.? Do you, like these musicians and painters, have an awareness of your own process?
Is that even an essential quality? Simon has argued (well, discussed, I'm not in disagreement) with me that we should respect an artist in any medium when they've shown a willingness to acknowledge those giants whose shoulders they stand on. (That's the bitesize chunk for the new G&P side-of-bus posters, but he put it more eloquently than that. Still, I think I owe him an interrogation.)
Important yet again to note Ulman's distinction between the initial, immediate readings of Prynne's poetry and the gradual power that builds as you descend through the layers. There is a sense of more going on, but you don't have to tunnel deeper than you wish to go.
Professor Li Zhimin:
"When one reads Prynne's poems, it is actually unnecessary, not to say impossible, to refer to other poetical works, as all possible quotations from or adoptions of the other works have been assimilated into an organic part of his poems, which stand by themselves. One can just read and enjoy this in whatever way one likes without worrying about the meanings of the 'original'... Prynne has suggested that each word is a history for him, but we do not need to trace the history of every word as Prynne has done before cooking a poem. What a reader needs to do is to enjoy, not to go to the kitchen to see what Prynne has done, and not necessarily to have the abstruse knowledge or skills that Prynne has acquired."
Yes, yes, yes. And bonus points for the cooking metaphor. Why feel you have to 'get' Prynne? Why can't you accept that there's an immediate, initial power that just sits there? 'Getting' Prynne is an impossibility, but also something instantly achieved by anyone who wants to read Prynne with an open mind. You can throw the book across the room if you don't like it. You don't have to get anything there in whole units, in systems of interpretation. The old 'cryptic crossword' mentality is a waste of time, a way of allowing yourself permission to be dumber than you are. Take what you want, and if you don't like what's there, fine. And if some other reader tells you, 'You don't get it!' call them an elitist prick once you've gone to your level and tell them to fuck off. Say why you don't like it. Is it too cold? Too hot? Too analytical? Too Latinate? Too scientific? Do the neologisms make you queasy? Are they neologisms or just obscure/obsolete words? Do you not like reading poetry with a dictionary on your other knee because you lost a leg in an accident on an escalator? That's OK, that's all fine. You have permission to be yourself when you read.
Now I am hungry, and need to re-read Prynne's poetry, because I was unfair on it first time around, because I felt excluded by the Academy. I no longer feel excluded, not because I work in a university, but because I don't care if I don't get it.
===
A Manner of Utterance is available now from Shearsman. It's an interesting and eclectic collection. Some of the essays are downright odd, or boring. Others are very charged and entertaining, with a playful form, like Richard Humphries' & Ian Friend's discussion. I found Keston Sutherland's essay fairly unreadable; I made it through two pages and thought, "That's enough for me," mainly for reasons of time, but if you read it and get through it, tell me what you think. The book needs a proof-read. Desperately. Some of Li Zhimin's essay is incomprehensible. But that's OK too. This book is kind of unique, and I kind of like that.
And thanks (or blame) to Andrew Bailey for the pun in this article's title.
Friday, 19 June 2009
Three Poems by Tom Stevenson
‘Come and see me in a minute when I’ve not got my hands full with all of this.’
The Marquee ran at full capacity for eight hours then broke into tattered wreckage.
Pull down the community veil.
The park is shut in the day time
and at night, who knows?
Cherry-pickers gave a birds-eye view of the crater before sunset when it flooded.
Of course, it’s all made safe
Behind the fence now.
Historical Notes
The obituaries of that period were excellent but
No letters of thanks were received.
Still, some fine examples are awaited
‘with no little anticipation.’
Water damage or possibly fire may be held responsible
Drastically reducing our records of definite newsprint.
Murder Mystery
‘And now if you will permit me
I think I can make sense of it all.
If everyone could remain present for the next quarter of an hour
They might learn something surprising.’
A woman excuses herself to a curate.
She begs a hanky to pass to a young girl, barely twenty
(the one who sobbed into her sleeve from the beginning).
Such sadness.
Everyone else likes it of course
But please, I think we all could use a drink.
‘Two scotches for twins?’
They only met for the first time the night before.
‘If you could stay with us,’
(A man in black ferries drinks)
‘We have need of someone discreet and characterless.
Lead us into the chambers!’
Leaden mirror. Florid mist.
==
Tom Stevenson is an artist and writer who was born in Southampton and studied Fine Art at Plymouth University's Exeter campus. He now lives in Exeter where he is part of the DJ collective Birds, Orphans and Fools. Tom is a regular reader at events such as The Umbrella Factory and People on Sunday and his work can also be found in The Cabinet Paper.
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
The Nutshell Philosophies of Katie Allen
Out of the bus-load of people on that dark night, not a one survived. Each died in tragic circumstances, each one worse than the last. Are you horrified yet? I am. Is there any chance that we can convert this sorry tale at the last moment into a love story?
#4
“Biccy?”
“No.”
“Biscuit?”
“No.”
“Go to park?”
“No. Go to bed.”
“Please may I have a biscuit?”
“No.”
“Forgive me, but why do you insist on such negativity at all times of day and night? I’m sick of it. You make me look a complete fool.”
“Biscuit?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
#5
It is my duty to announce to you, reader, that, however hard you and I both try, we know we’re kidding no one, in that by the time we have hurtled to the end of this rather elaborate and unnecessarily long sentence, our relationship will be over forever – goodbye!
#7
She noticed him at the supermarket, selecting mangoes. At the cheese counter, he asked if she believed in love at first sight; she said no, but when she got home she painted an oil-on-canvas that later sold for a lot of money. He wasn’t in it, but mangoes featured prominently.
#10
There was once a famous writer who wrote brilliant novels and won all the prizes. This writer’s wife could not read a word; she was an illiterate peasant. She took her husband’s books and built an ark so big from the paper it became wood again, and off she sailed.
#14
She waited behind the hedge. Who were they? Men in bowler hats, pink A4 files tucked underarm. Why pink? (Well, it was unsettling... less unsettling than the fact that they were, without question, following her.) They walked past her, heading further into the maze. She breathed a sigh of relief.
#15
No, no, I can’t, I simply can’t, I refuse in fact. I’m tired and my psychiatrist said I’m not to put up with this anymore. I mean, it’s getting out of hand, it really is. It’s got to stop. You know where the machine is. Make your own Goddamn cappuccino.
#17
The couple smiled into each other’s eyes. The boy kissed her gently, laughed a little. Why did he laugh? Was he happy? Was he cheating, trying to hide it behind an open mouth? Why ‘laugh’? Why not ‘chuckle’? Why are they so happy? Why can I have none of this?
#18
In Lucy’s bedroom, the giggles subsided. The girls were bored. ‘Not to worry,’ Lucy said. ‘Let’s analyse boys now.’ This did the trick; they all grinned. Boy-language was serious business. What did Ben’s raised eyebrow signify? They stared at Lucy’s open notebook where she had pinned it down, still twitching.
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