Candice wrote: << ['terrible poem'..'phenomenally bad'] terms as out of
place in scholarly and critical commentary as 'worst poem' is (which John
Temple has noted).
Since the tone of my previous post might be ambiguous, I just want to say
that I don't have a problem with the term 'worst' as such and (this side
being hung up on them) wouldn't want to be without value judgements. I was
taking the opportunity to pick up Nate's use of 'worst' to speculate on how
far some forms of linguistic innovation impact on such terms. He can be
right in two ways ISTM: 1) 'Worst' is a term we reserve to apply exclusively
within that earlier ('comprehensible') sector of Prynne's poetry the TEI is
situated in and we have alternatives for the later poetry. 2) We judge
_all_ the later poetry, however opaque, to be 'superior' to that 'worst'
poem. Of course, within certain parameters, one person's 'opacity' is always
another's 'transparency' (remember how a few decades ago Williams' poems
were seen by influential critics as the end of civilisation as we know it),
but I take it that the break in Prynne's career (and he surely can't be a
unique case) is clear enough to carry the simplifications involved here.
'Rebarbative' is an accusation (presumably). 'Merely rebarbative' sounds
like a judgement to the extent that it more strongly implies, 'and I'm sure
this will be your experience too', but isn't there a shift involved from
'bad' to 'a bad use of my time', so that 'worst' increasingly means 'what I
have got the least out of in view of the time i've invested'. Something like
this seems to underlie a remark in a review (which I can't find at the
moment) of John Wilkinson's 'Oort's Cloud' (Barque), where the writer,
having praised several sections of these selected earlier poems, admits that
he can't get with a long section in the middle of the book (if i remember
right) and says something like 'but maybe i just need to read it another ten
or twenty times'. Whether this is irritation, damning with faint praise,
on-the-level, showing respect or all of these it avoids (postpone's)
judgement. But 'someday, baby' as BB says....
Or not? If Reeve and Kerridge (p116) are right to hint that 'sick and
nonplussed/ by the thought of less/ you say stuff it', the closing words of
Prynne's _Down Where Changed_ which are (partly) 'an angry giving up', might
be seen as referring to the reader's experience, then maybe 'the worst
poetic experience' is where Nate's 'worst poem' is now at. But 'stuff it' is
no guarantee that you won't be back, whereas 'worst' just might be,
All best,
John
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