another little gust of idea re: _SH_, does anybody else think that (Drew
didn't say so, but may think so?) much of the poem is concerned with
narcotics? 'Concerned with' is a greyed-out bunting, of course. Drew
does mention the glassy spliff, but doesn't (if I recall) say that this
might be a crack pipe. Also, "It gets up my nose" - marijuana wouldn't,
coke might. This is a controlled surfeit, of one kind; stimulating
selected branches of the brain in order to excite an amplified response
temporarily; also it's a turning-away and in that sense implicitly a
disregard for all the usual law-bindings of normal sociability (and
normally prepared use and reception of speech). There are other clues
swerving to this end, I don't have the text with me but may try to post
some tomorrow (if anybody's interested). Drug use of course an infraction
within the possibility of a steady self-expression in _Wound
Response_ also, though this is a different angle (rather a -compelled-
than a chosen use, and with this in mind might not _SH_ seem less
"vulnerable", to use Drew's term, that is, (from the latin) "wounded",
than -risky-?). I wonder what might be made of a comparison between the
ways in which these two texts raise narcosis to an issue. Is one oriented
from a different politics than the other, and are they equally heedful of
the availablity of any such orientation? Wilkinson's peacetime,
Prynne's war (in replete attachment stands the order of battle)? Prynne's
calls De Quincey (eg) to mind more rapidly, until I recall DQ's struggles
with and enticements of deliberateness; the reference is slightly banal
however. Any thoughts?


Keston



as an aside: whilst there are similarities between Wilkinson and Wieners,
the latter's anxiety over and prurience in the range of -glamour- make
this comparison stretch only so far, for me. Doesn't _Behind the State
Capitol_ reek of that decay and intoxication? Is it that Drew wishes
perhaps programmatically to distract criticism from the (to my mind quite
blatant) interconnectedness of JW & JHP, in order that the former might
get the breathing space he deserves? Not sure, myself, if this is
needful; (without assuming this as Drew's intention) anyone who read JW
and had read JHP would see crucial similarities, repute is only
competitive if we permit ourselves the arousal of that streak and find it
to have been significant (at least amongst contemporaries), or at least,
why not find it contemptuous and lose it, I think that JW stands apart
anyhow and -brilliantly-



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