Is J H Prynne Difficult?
The short answer to this is 'yes' in that Prynne uses strategies that defy the standard notions of what poetry should do. He uses short combinations of words that at first sight have little to do with the combinations around them. The work is not linear in that it doesn't make a sequential number of points that lead to a conclusion and Prynne incorporates allusions to scientific and economic concepts that many would consider 'unpoetic'.
This is compounded by Prynne deliberately placing demands on the reader so that we have to do a fair amount of work in order to get passed the baffled stage. The good news is that Prynne rarely uses foreign words or phrases, the less good news is that he relies heavily on secondary or obscure meanings of 'ordinary words' and sometimes is more interested in how a phrase sounds than what it might mean.
The more appropriate adjective for Prynne's work is probably 'complex'in that it operates on several interdependent levels and is also a conscious attempt to break with what has gone before.
The examples page contains a selection of the work together with possible reading strategies but here is one section from Streak, Willing, Entourage, Artesian (2009) which gives some indication of why Prynne is both difficult and important:
Cornice buffed to distrained volume how much
worn as cloud treading a skyline, dependency
revoked a figure told up marking did you see
run to it. For to run intrinsic the water gateLook out, the same the same! Print besides, hot
torment in storm see out nor new nor fusion peat
a list for temperget the skin off at margin, see
more out yet. Still eyes please are they foundCatchment plaster grand rubble up ask again,
same turn at given, graven indignant enough
weak old and cheap remains. It is either joy
certainly in a flood, plain for brim deepens toFix out gaze on this, on virtue. Acknowledge
skid forward or same plastic fervid embankment
her link antler, rising and driven. Above his
anthem converge tall preening slips to axialImage dilation eager for size, steep-side per
macro run by dozen oh warship guage silent
elated regimen. See the same hold for top flit
margin payout, grab on eyes wide to ever fade,Total extensor bin. Hold your to me ligate for
free ply employ random either way countenance
rebel gate, gate far over enter attracted win
worn cumber ask, dazzle so profile ply to play.
Initially this appears to be incredibly dense and incomprehensible but there are some footholds which may serve as a useful starting point. 'Streak, Willing' is written in four line stanzas which are divided into 12 sections consisting of 6 stanzas per section. An initial read of the poem as a whole reveals a number of apparent references to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Not all of the sections appear to contain these allusions but there are enough of them to signal that Ulster may be at least on of the poem's themes. Reading the rest of the poem reveals that the word 'same' crops up frequently but not in a way that reveals what the word is referring to.
Because there are no titles to any of the pages it isn't clear whether this is one long poem or whether each page contains a single poem that can be read in isolation. The only clue that we have is the fact that the last stanza on each page ends with a full stop whereas all the others run on.
The above is the third section of the poem and the word 'same' occurs four times. The first being 'Look out, the same, the same!' which would appear to be some kind of warning but the nature of the danger isn't made clear. The other two don't initially appear to make any kind of sense.
This section also contains several references to sight (look, gaze, see, eyes). Prynne is very interested in perception and the way that we immediately experience the world so this is worth bearing in mind.
The reader is also given a number of instructions and is asked a number of questions- 'run to it, look out, ask again, fix out gaze on this, did you see, are they found, how much worn etc and this is a common feature of Prynne's more recent work.
Having staked out the ground, this section contains two phrases which may provide footholds with which to proceed. The first is 'grand rubble up ask again'. The Grand Hotel in Brighton was blown up by the Provisional IRA during the 1984 Conservative party conference. Given references to hunger, blankets and starving in other sections, it is likely that 'grand rubble refers to this event and 'ask again' is a reference to the IRA statement made after the bombing which asks again for the 'occupation' of Ulster by British troops to be brought to an end. On the other hand 'grand rubble' could be a reference to recent imperialist adventures in Irag and Afghanistan pointing to the fact that military intervention has only succeeded in creating rubble, or Prynne could be referring to both.
'Same fervid plastic embankment' looks nonsensical until consultation of the OED reveals that 'embankment' was a term used in the 19th century to describe a 'banking speculation'. 'Streak, willing' was published in 2009 after the recent banking farce so this is likely to refer to that event. 'Same' in this instance may refer to the fact that excessive speculation has always in the past led to a financial catastrophe- Prynne has never been able to resist a dig at the money men. 'Fervid' refers to the intensity with which over-excited bankers pushed themselves into ever riskier and ruinous deals whilst plastic is probably used to denote both fake and spending with credit cards.
With regard to the sight words, Prynne's recent commentary on Wordsworth's 'Solitary Reaper' demonstrates his almost obsessive interest in immediate perception, he has also witten approvingly about the work of Marcel Merleau-Ponty who stresses the essentially partial nature of our view of things. At this point it's probably useful to consider the difference betwee the sight verbs used in this section.
The difference between 'look' and 'see' is one of intent, we consciouslt choose to look at something, we don't see at something- we see things without deciding to do so in advance. 'Gaze' is of a different order in that it implies looking at something intently for a length of time. These differences may be important in making sense of this section.
Another repeated word is 'gate'. The first stanza has 'to run intrinsic the water gate'. This could refer to the scandal that removed Richard Nixon from office but this seems unlikely. The most famous water gate in the UK is Traitors' Gate at the Tower of London so this could allude to treachery and execution or it could refer to the regulating function of water gates in general. It may be as well to bear in mind that 'gate' is also a term used in electronics with three different meanings- Prynne is fond of using scientific / technical terms in his work. 'Water' may also be a verb but this seems fairly remote, even for Prynne.
'Rebel gate' becomes clearer when the OED reveals that gate was once used to describe a strategy or a way of doing things. This would then be 'IRA strategy' and far over could be 'far from over'.
The above is one small example of the kind of attention that Prynne's work demands. It is difficult but it isn't obscure and it more than repays the amount of effort that the reader is prepared to exert.
Prynne on translating difficult poetry
The third issue of the Cambridge Literary Review has published a 'Keynote Speech' given by Prynne in China in 2008 entitled "Difficulties in the translation of 'difficult' poems" which turns out to be the best guide to Prynne's practice that I have yet seen. What follows is a crude synopsis but I hope it gives more than a flavour of his analysis/argument.
He starts with a general description of modernism noting that:
"In difficult modernist poetry there can be obscure and complex aspects relating to thought and ideas, to imagery and structure, to condensed or broken linkages and to embedded references to other texts or works."
I read this and realised that this wasn't so much a general description of modernist poetry but a list of some of the main aspects of Prynne's work, nobody else that I'm aware of combines all of these elements together. Prynne also talks about the difficulties that the reader/translator faces when trying to work out which of the many meanings of a word or phrase and which of the many pathways should be followed. This is very redolent of my own experience of reading Prynne's work which is littered with moments of what he describes as 'rich uncertainty'. He also makes the point that good difficult poetry is surprising and that this surprise sometimes takes our breath away. Geoffrey Hill makes a similar point in 'Language, Suffering and Silence' where he writes about 'semantic shock' being an important component of a successful poem.
I think the following usefully sums up the Prynne project:
"In a more technical way we can acknowledge that unfamiliarity plays an important part in pattern-recognition, and we can ask how this feature gains its effect. If two words are placed together that are not normally associated as from the same field of reference or meaning, a kind of semantic spark or jump may be created that is intensely localised within the continuity of the text process: it may be a kind of "hot spot" that burns very bright but which the reader can quite quickly assimilate within the larger patterns of composition. Sometimes these sparks can follow in quick succession, many of them, producing disturbance patterns of their own, extended trains of unfamiliar words and phrase which break the rules of local sense. Even so, a reader can feel carried along by the energy of surprise and unresolved ambiguity, and the translator can recognise the challenge to translating skills even if good solutions are hard to find."
These 'semantic sparks' seem to be increasingly frequent in Prynne's more recent work, 'Streak, Willing, Entourage, Artesian' appears to be littered with them. Whilst being surprised and carrying this level of ambiguity is very rewarding, I find the longer poems require me to hold a lot of these uncertainties in my head at the same time which can be quite intimidating. For example 'Streak, Willing' appears to have the recent civil war in Ulster as a major theme yet the third section contains a reference to an economic recession which doesn't appear to occur elsewhere. This may be because I haven't picked up these references yet but (because of its length) I do find it difficult to get the whole poem into my head but this doesn't prevent me from trying because I know that I will eventually be familiar with all the cryptic phrases and allusions.
Having read and absorbed what Prynne has to say, I think that for me the biggest 'attraction' in reading him is the multi-dimensional quality of the work in that he makes full use of the modernist bag of tricks but there is also the additional elements of word sounds and form that come from much older poetic traditions. So, as well as surprise and uncertainty, I think I read Prynne because of the cognitive challenges that his work presents and the enjoyment comes in trying to put all the elements together.
Prynne rightly distances difficult modernist work from post-modernist "playfulness where meaning is allowed to skim across the 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." We could argue whether this is a fair description of all post-modern verse or whether its just a bit of a dig at the work of John Ashbery but I think the line is properly drawn against those who think that Prynne is inviting readers to make their own poem when reading his work.
We now come to the thorny issue of the dialectic, regular readers will know that I groan inwardly when mention is made of the dialectic in relation to poetry primarily because I feel that this complex term with very many competing definitions is used as a kind of lazy shorthand by poets and critics who want to display their ideological credentials. Here's Prynne's use of the term:
"If these many directions are developed so as to produce strong contradiction and self-dispute then the method may become a dialectic practice, in which poetic form and expression are brought into internal contest with themselves and with each other."
I'm not disputing that difficult poetry can produce both contradiction and self dispute but I would like to query whether we need to describe such elements as "a dialectic practice" because the dialectic is about much more than just contradiction.
As usual with Prynne, the footnotes are almost as revealing as the text itself. There are references to Eliot, Empson, Ivor Richards and Sergei Eisenstein amongst many others.
In conclusion, this is essential reading for anyone who is serious about getting to grips with Prynne and may also serve to cut a much needed path through the critical obfuscation that continues to be produced by others.