Prynne.

Moxley, The Middle Room.

also Giscombe, Prairie Style.
and (by ?) pamela. ....km's class: poetries of dislocation.

coyne class: Heidegger's Turn. IM Intro to Metaphysics. Pathmarks. so, appealling. also: Basic Problems in Philosophy. not seen before? *not* BP in Phenomenology, own in german & english. and the wooded whatever ~ another set of essays ~ os. we still have 2 on the shelf.

+ Zeitoun. would like to see what I think of Eggers's writing, and am interested in this account, of man Zeitoun and wife ~ experience during & after Hurricane Katrina.
--maybe also City of Refuge, by Tom Piazza. fiction re same, experience of two families in New Orleans at time of Katrina. almost won the Morning News book tournament.

+ The Unit. swedish author. Other press. into scandinavian writing lately? knausgaard norway. whatshisname iceland who I've tht for some time shld try Halldor Laxness that blue bk whatitstitle, that I like. now I have archipelago cloth edtn of his first novel.
The Unit appeals because about closed space, finite life.
like Saramago, The Cave. which I am trying to remember. the clay figurines they take to sell. and they move there, why do they have to move there? a closed inside world. entertainment. amenities. then what happens?
+ Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. "final donation." same phrase right?


purchased Prynne, Zeitoun. also Inside Picture Books and also The Brightening Glance, by Ellen H~ Spitz. seems very good. so that's another direction of current interest, those bks and also Daniel N Stern: Diary of a Baby.

poetry. ~writing, story. childhood. play.


on tv, starting up. January: Big Love. February (early Feb. *not* March.): Lost.
...then in March? Breaking Bad. In Treatment. maybe usofTara.

Persephone the Wanderer - Poets.org
by Louise Glück from Averno

In the first version, Persephone is taken from her mother and the goddess of the earth
punishes the earth—this is consistent with what we know of human behavior,
that human beings take profound satisfaction in doing harm, particularly
unconscious harm: we may call this negative creation.

As is well known, the return of the beloved does not correct the loss of the beloved: Persephone returns home stained with red juice like a character in Hawthorne—
I am not certain I will keep this word: is earth "home" to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivably, in the bed of the god? Is she at home nowhere? ..
..You are allowed to like no one, you know. The characters
are not people. They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict.

..

You must ask yourself:
where is it snowing?

White of forgetfulness,
of desecration—

It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says

Persephone is having sex in hell.
Unlike the rest of us, she doesn't know
what winter is, only that
she is what causes it.

..

The terrible reunions in store for her will take up the rest of her life.
When the passion for expiation expiate DHL snake 'sth to expiate' ~ to atone for is chronic, fierce, you do not choose the way you live. You do not live; you are not allowed to die.

..

White of forgetfulness,
white of safety—

They say there is a rift in the human soul which was not constructed to belong
entirely to life. Earth asks us to deny this rift, a threat disguised as suggestion— all that mattered was sth I cldn't remember
as we have seen in the tale of Persephone which should could be read as an argument between the mother and the lover—
the daughter is just meat. and the rift is in her? wh you see if you read this as a tug btw mother-god and lover-god? creator and demon?

When death confronts her, she has never seen the meadow without the daisies.
Suddenly she is no longer singing her maidenly songs about her mother's beauty and fecundity. Where the rift is, the break is.

My soul shattered no not shattered ~ tired, wearied with the strain of trying to belong to earth—

What will you do,
when it is your turn in the field with the god?
______________________________

ok. when it is my turn. what will I

would I rather hear about Ariadne? closes her eyes so as not to see the men who could only appear and disappear. I close my eyes and all the world drops dead, I open them up and all is born again, I think I made you up inside my hear.
or maybe Kore, can we call Persephone Kore? disappearance. she is who's not there.

so, this is not esp appealing. I dislike some of the words ~ cliched?, though maybe she is just unafraid to use the obvious words. and obvious line breaks? do the line breaks add anything? seems not, I like better deleting them. I do think this might benefit from being read within the book, I do like her work as book length sequences, the accruing of theme.

prism

	Louise Gluck, “Prism”, Averno.

1.
Who can say what the world is? The world
is in flux, therefore
unreadable, the winds shifting,
the great plates invisibly shifting and changing-

2.
Dirt. Fragments
of blistered rock. On which
the exposed heart constructs
a house, memory: the gardens
manageable, small in scale, the beds
damp at the sea’s edge-

3.
As one takes in
an enemy, through these windows
one takes in
the world:

here is the kitchen, here the darkened study.

Meaning: I am master here.

4.
When you fall in love, my sister said,
it’s like being struck by lightning.

She was speaking hopefully,
to draw the attention of the lightning.

I reminded her that she was repeating exactly
our mother’s formula, which she and I

had discussed in childhood, because we both felt
that what we were looking at in the adults

were the effects not of lightning
but of the electric chair.

5.
Riddle:
Why was my mother happy?

Answer:
She married my father

6.
“You girls,” My mother said, “should marry
someone like your father”

That was one remark. Another was,
“There is no one like your father.”

7.
From the pierced clouds, steady lines of silver.

Unlikely
yellow of the witch hazel, veins
of mercury that were the paths of the rivers-

Then the rain again, erasing
footprints in the damp earth.

An implied path, like
a map without a crossroads.

8.
The implication was, it was necessary to abandon
childhood. The word “marry” was a signal.
You could also treat it as aesthetic advice;
the voice of the child was tiresome,
it had no lower register.
The word was a code, mysterious, like the Rosetta stone.
It was also a roadsign, a warning.
You could take a few things with you like a dowry.
You could take the part of you that thought.
“Marry” meant you should keep that part quiet.

9.
A night in summer. Outside,
sounds of a summer storm. Then the sky clearing.
In the window, constellations of summer.

I’m in a bed. This man and I,
we are suspended in the strange calm
sex often induces. Most sex induces.
Longing, what is that? Desire, what is that?

In the window, constellations of summer.
Once, I could name them.

10.
Abstracted
shapes, patterns.
The light of the mind. The cold, exacting
fires of disinterestedness, curiously
blocked by earth, coherent, glittering
in air and water,
the elaborate
signs that said now plant, now, harvest-
I could name them, I had names for them:
two different things.

11.
Fabulous things, stars.

When I was a child, I suffered from insomnia.
Summer nights, my parents permitted me to sit by the lake;
I took the dog for company.

Did I say “suffered”? That was my parents’ way of explaining
tastes that seemed to them
inexplicable: better “suffered” than “preferred to live with the dog.”

Darkness. Silence that annulled mortality.
The tethered boats rising and falling.
When the moon was full, I could sometimes read the girls’ names
painted to the sides of the boats:
Ruth Ann, Sweet Izzy, Peggy My Darling-

They were going nowhere, those girls.
There was nothing to be learned from them.

I spread my jacket in the damp sand,
the dog curled up beside me.
My parents couldn’t see the lift: in my head;
when I wrote it down, they fixed the spelling.

Sounds of the lake. The soothing, inhuman
sounds of water lapping the dock, the dog scuffling somewhere
in the weeds-

12.
The assignment was to fall in love.
The details were up to you.
The second part was
to include in the poem certain words,
words drawn from a specific text
on another subject altogether.

13.
Spring rain, then a night in summer.
A man’s voice, then a woman’s voice.

You grew up, you were struck by lightning.
When you opened your eyes, you were wired forever to your true love.

It only happened once. Then you were taken care of,
your story was finished.

It happened once. Being struck was like being vaccinated;
the rest of your life you were immune,
you were warm and dry.

Unless the shock wasn’t deep enough.
Then you weren’t vaccinated, you were addicted.

14.
The assignment was to fall in love.
The author was female.
The ego had to be called the soul.

The action took place in the body.
Stars represented everything else: dreams, the mind, etc.

The beloved was identified
with the self in a narcissistic projection.
The mind was a subplot. It went nattering on.

Time was experienced
less as narrative than ritual.
What was repeated had weight.

Certain endings were tragic, thus acceptable.
Everything else was failure.

15.
Deceit. Lies. Embellishments we call
hypotheses-

There were too many roads, too many versions.
There were too many roads, no one path-

And at the end?

16.
List the implications of “crossroads.”
Answer: a story that will have a moral.
Give a counter-example:

17.
The self ended and the world began.
They were of equal size,
commensurate,
one mirrored the other.

18.
The riddle was: why couldn’t we live in the mind.

The answer was: the barrier of the earth intervened.

19.
The room was quiet.
That is, the room was quiet, but the lovers were breathing.

In the same way, the night was dark.
It was dark, but the stars shone.

The man in bed was one of several men
to whom I gave my heart. The gift of the self,
that is without limit.
Without limit, though it recurs.

The room was quiet. It was an absolute,
like the black night.

20.
A night in summer. Sounds of a summer storm.
The great plates invisibly shifting and changing-

And in the dark room, the lovers sleeping in each other’s arms.

We are, each of us, the one who wakens first,
who stirs first and sees, there in the first dawn,
the stranger.

narratives | Tumblr (cache)

previously:

Small Works - Pam Rehm [Flood editions; 'an ever more spare clarity .. sustenance from the natural world, children's games, and familiar valedictions: "The world of consequence be with you - always." 'There is neither an I nor a Thou within range, but both of these seem to be balancing Rehm's thoughts from end to end.' -Fanny Howe hmm? no I or thou in range. but thoughts balanced by I here, thou there. ?

Catch Light - Sarah O'Brien [National Poetry Series 2009; Coffee House Press. “The whole - world is synonyms”.. a debut collection that contemplates the art of photography and the many essences of light.

The Journey - H.G.Adler

Collections of Nothing - William Davies King



recently:

Animals in Film - Jonathan Burt [little green reaction bks (uk) monograph

Black Sun - Kristeva

Goest - Cole Swensen ['Goest, sonorous with a hovering “ghost” mm which shimmers at the root of all things, is a meditation—even initiation—on the act of seeing, proprioception, and the alchemical properties of light as it exists naturally and inside the human realm of history, lore, invention and the “whites” of painting. .. “intellectus”—light of the mind..' ' ..light, glass, mirrors, flame, ice, mercury..' ~put near Catch Light

Body - Jenny Boully [had so'd yrs ago after shipping one; pos; now in new edtn. footnotes to unseen text = blank pages above the notes

Coll Stories of Lydia Davis [fsg hardcover



& km:

Middle Room - Jennifer Moxley
['A love song to friendship, the Middle Room is a valuable and delicious literary history of recent community formations on the west coast.' ~I am wary of community formations on the west coast -'what happens when you find the avant-garde of your dreams in San Diego, California' -'this true-life sex and love and car-culture confession .. the cars are open-top, the poets seethe, love and undermine each other..'
y pretty sure J Moxley is who justin talked about: assoc w the Baffler in Chgo, is at Univ of Maine now Jennifer Moxley. Associate Professor of English. 5752 Neville Hall Room 213. Orono, ME 04469. EMAIL: jennifer.moxley@umit.maine.edu ...
www.umaine.edu/english/faculty/jennifer-moxley


Poems - J.H.Prynne
[wkp: Jeremy Halvard Prynne (born 1936 ) is a British poet.
Prynne's early influences include Charles Olson and Donald Davie. His firt book was published in 1962; Prynne has excluded it from his canon. His Poems (1982) collected all the work he wanted to keep in print. An expanded and updated version appeared in 1999, with another, further updated, published in 2005. but did semcoop just get it (for first time?) fr uk?

pw: Many readers of so-called innovative or experimental verse regard Prynne as Britain's most important living poet. Until now, most of his work has been available only in small editions and chapbooks. Prynne, who teaches at Cambridge University, is the center of a group known as the Cambridge poets. His peculiarly local influence is no accident, since he has stayed away from large-scale publishing; he made this decision partly to honor the poems' quiet, hermetic quality, and partly as a response to the absorption of experimental poetics into academic parlance-a parallel, for Prynne, to capitalism's absorption of opposition. Prynne's difficulties demand, and reward, close attention. His early work shows what he learned from Charles Olson, switching from personal to political to geological frames of reference in a single phrase. Enjoyable for their complex logic and concealed wit, these early poems often alternate incompatible metres, creating a distinctive discursive cascade. Next to these recalcitrant works Prynne has placed sequences like "Day Light Songs," more lyrical, less dense and equally accomplished. .. While never a rabble-rousing avant-gardist, Prynne continues to make startling discoveries. Not-You (1993) introduces staggered lines that fall together like tone clusters.. ~innovator in the way of gerard manley hopkins sprung rhythm? (di piero: succession of poets from Thms Hardy. but Hopkins no successors. ~too ~idiosyncr) no I suppose v different ~

kirkus: ..an omnibus gathering from one of Great Britains most highly acclaimed contemporary poets. Still largely unfamiliar to American readers, Prynne has authored more than 20 volumes in England over the past 30 years. A stylist in the high modernist tradition, Prynnes lapidary phraseology and interior rhetoric..
..his voice is strong enough to carry into laterand, one hopes, healthierages to find the audience he deserves. laterand mm. (later and, one hopes, healthier ages.) carried healthierages into laterand. laterand laterland.

-Prynne has been for several decades now the most important "unknown" poet in the English language, his work earning a reputation for its sybilline authority & beauty. A nutshell description would be: imagine a collision between Charles Olson, William Wordsworth & Paul Celan--& if you don't have quite Prynne's work, you'd have a rough idea of its excitement & its extraordinary summing-up of an entire poetic tradition. which tradition? lyric?

-Prynne is the most illustrious of a fairly small number of English-language poets (others include Barry MacSweeney and Iain Sinclair) who still cleave to a sort-of modernist idea that poems ought not to say things that can be said any other way, but instead are verbal artifacts unto themselves. His early work is in a shabby, low-rent Four-Quartetsy sort of mode, but during the late Seventies he really hit his stride. His best works are glossy, sexy, sardonic, thoroughly worked-over verbal machines that do what few other poets have dared to do since the death of Pound. Prynne is not _primarily_ interested in communicating some amazingly primal or psycho-sexual-cultural-political-transcendental experience, he's interested in the glint and spark of words put together in a certain way is that enough? ~ it is if sth happens 'is going on' in the poem: mind's mountains cliffs of fall, and this saves him from being either kitschy (as the worst work of Ted Hughes can be) or trivial (as, well, pretty much most poets usually are.) This is definitely a desert island book, if only for the sheer amount of allusion and density Prynne is able to pack into a short poem - even at his most recondite, he's pushing you towards the world you've vainly tried to leave behind.

- Britain's leading late Modernist poet J.H. Prynne..


'An introduction to the poetry of J.H.Prynne', by Rod Mengham and John Kinsella (Jacket # 7, April 1999) by Rod Mengham and John Kinsella.
This piece first appeared in the Bloodaxe Books [ www.bloodaxebooks.demon.co.uk ] catalogue advertising the Collected Poems of J.H.Prynne (1999).
J.H. Prynne is possibly the most significant English poet of the late twentieth century.
He is a lyrical experimentalist..
Rightly particular about the presentation of poetry --the integrity of text, the frame and field of the page, the context in which presentation and consequently reception take place-- Prynne has been patient in collating another "collected" volume. This collection of poems (the Collected Poems)has been a long time in coming. At its core is the Poems volume published in 1982 by Agneau 2, long since out of print. But there have been over half-a-dozen other works since then published by small presses in small print runs.
..The ghettoizing of Prynne's reputation has resulted from his decision to publish only with small presses and to engage in public debate almost entirely through the pages of little magazines. huh.
As Prynne has avoided mainstream publishing it has been assumed that he rejects the 'general' readership, that his is a language of an informed & 'alternative' clique. But it is the indifference of the mainstream publisher to "the work" itself how is this indifference manifested by the mainstr publisher? that has been a problem for Prynne, and not the idea of availability. The affordable volume that can be read by anyone with an interest in what is going on in the poem would appeal to Prynne.
..the fluency and balance of the philosophical monologist are belied by crowding intimations of a whole series of relativising contexts.. The English landscape is seen in relation to the withdrawal of the glaciers, its patterns of settlement judged in relation to the customs of nomadic tribes.
..thresholds are located around the body, at the various points of entry and exit where the processes of absorbing information from the world or of sending it out into the world, must start and finish. The crucial question, of where & when personal agency can truly be said to come to life, is posed most revealingly in situations where the body is in trouble, in circumstances of estrangement or pain, and consequently much of the research encoded in the poems focuses on the extremities of what one text refers to as 'wound response'. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The making & unmaking of the world.
N.H. Reeve and Richard Kerridge, in their lively study of the poetry of J.H. Prynne, Nearly Too Much nice title well bcs for me so m is nearly too m; what is to Prynne, according to Reeve & Kerridge? (Liverpool University Press, 1995), write of the 'indeterminacy' and the 'avoidance of totality and closure.'
..some of Prynne's most signif affiliations are w American and continental writers and thinkers; Charles Olson, Frank O'Hara, Martin Heidegger, Paul Celan make their presence felt at different stages of his work.