Re: Drew on Sarn Helen, and Keston on Drew - having almost
regained mental, physical, psychic equiLibrium after the successful
Exmouth event, where I gave a paper on Prynne (and Wilkinson on
Prynne, and Reeve & Kerridge, and Drew on de Kooning and Prynne), as
part of a panel chaired by Drew. In competition with P. Middleton
and D. Oliver for an audience, so - intimate affair, but if I had
anything to say, it would fit with "Keston on...", about how "the
desire (tho` I wouldn`t say `desire`) to abandon practical
criticism", and "the concentration of interpretative effort on its
hindrance" goes hand in hand with a, ok, desire to confer possession
of untrammelled ethical quality on (un)said verse. - Not having
understood a word of this work for the last 15 years, I am now in a
position to suggest that it is the source of all knowledge and
goodness - that sort of thing. Reminding the
folks that Prynne`s poetry is poetry seemed like a good idea.
Critics` "resistance" is their own resistance to the poetic,
and it has, for them, to mean a total resistance, usually to commodification,
i.e. to everything, i.e. even to readerly consumption that would seek
to use it against what they deplore.
Kind of like those well-meaning people who think "to subvert" is an
intransitive verb. Anyone seen or heard Prynne complain about, or
celebrate, a text`s resistance? So I started with whines about John
Wilkinson`s essay on Not-You - how N-Y`s "resistance" provokes a
series of questions which ask, finally, what value N-Y has...is it just
jumbled-up bollocks? Without actually asking that, because it`s a
set-up for saying Prynne is the best thing ever. This is nothing
like what Prynne does in his own critical prose.
robin
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