Tag Pete, first off thanks for the two poems -- I'd be interested to hear
people's remarks on these, particularly since pURL seems to have
hyper-hibernated --
in brisk response to your repositioning of the weasel outset: I can see
where the desire to do this comes from, I feel it myself, though personally
I believe that following that desire through is a satisfaction that ought
to be eschewed: such materially licentious exposition cannot be neutral,
particularly not in this case, the achievement of which seems to me to be
staked quite unequivocally on the obtrusiveness of an irresolvable
compaction; should any extra/cover version so resolved appear to have keyed
in to the poem usefully, the use so derived would I suspect only afflict
the opportunity of the original text to assert (at the very least) its
dissent from the partial viability of its own alleviation: alleviation
seems to me, here, quite crucially unavailable. If the intention is to
scatter the text's resources, to imply some kind of increased opportunity
for personal discovery in some realised Bartheisan sense, alleviation may
very well contribute to this end; I have to say I'm against this, do not
find such scattering even vaguely analogous to any desirable politics,
would rather suffer the text's acetism than simulate its hypothetical
former prerogative not to inflcit such suffering. Also I would say, I do
not find Prynne's lines as they stand so very traditional visually - in
fact, I think the scattered lines are more traditional in that the sense
they contrive to issue is more readily appropriated and does not prohibit
so aggressively the possibility of alleviation; aren't English lines
traditionally organized to promote a cumulative interest or argument, with
individual lines affecting the dynamic of this project primarily in their
relation to adjacent lines but with the guarantee of their sustained
pertinence throughout the reader's movement onward? Which lines come
closer to this - the original or scattered jhps? The purely visual aspect
of the original jhps is quite untraditionally blockish, almost a
monochromatic Rothko, ecce xerox. I can place them less immediately.
Anyhow -- it's great to have your thoughts on this, and hopefully anybody
else's -- what says anybody?
thanks, Keston
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