Alan: I think perhaps you have a couple reviews of Prynne's _Poems_ (1982)
in mind. One is Ted Pearson's in _Poetics Journal_ 2; this is a quite
modest & intelligent effort to give a reading of JHP's sequence _Vernal
Aspects_, & doesn't harness Prynne to any particular "school" or polemic,
or to Language poetry. Perhaps therefore what you have in mind is Jed
Rasula's rather hyperbolic review of _Poems_ in _Sulfur_ 10, which has the
bizarre claim that "Prynne's readers must ultimately be Americans". -- I
don't know if Perloff may have said something more about the relation of UK
poets & Language poetry elsewhere, but the most obvious passage would be
her critique of Rod Mengham's review of a pile of Language "theory" (_The
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book_, _Content's Dream_, etc.; the review appeared in
_Textual Practice_) in her book _Radical Artifice_. I don't have this
stuff in front of me at the moment so can't comment further, but maybe
those interested can track down these materials & report back.

Yes, I was rather conscious after I hit the return key that my
quasi-serious (really!) filtering of _Conductors of Chaos_ was by no means
accurate--besides leaving yourself (indeed sui generis!) in the Cambridge
camp, it would even more bizarrely do so to Bill Griffiths. I should
perhaps simply have listed a bunch of post-_A Various Art_ names for those
interested (Wilkinson, Milne, Denise Riley, Mengham, DS Marriott, Andrew
Lawson, Nigel Wheale, Tony Lopez, Sutherland, Helen Macdonald... there's a
round 10 to begin with). Grouping's an idle pastime in many ways, I'll
admit, but its sheer inevitability & its serious repercussions on poetry
that concerns me make me think that rather than the typical scenario (the
term used offhandedly outside the group, the term frowned upon within that
group) perhaps affinities need to be made _more_ explicit but more numerous
and tangled.

Anyway, am too busy at the moment to start many more hares--gotta clean
this place up before some friends arrive in a few hours, & in general will
have to ration my posts more stringently in the interests of getting some
work done around here--but surely now the various threads here have reached
a near-stasis resembling the quietly vibrating terminus of a game of Life.
-- General note: I certainly don't object to argument or even the odd
savage blast in discussion groups, but it's as well to remember that
aggression tends to be narrowly focussed (on one or two people) & so
implicitly warns off others from joining in. Though I think probably this
list isn't the place to engage in close reading of particular texts such as
Prynne's, Raworth's, etc.--I mean, that would by no means be a bad thing,
but perhaps might push outside its remit, or bother those who are
uninterested in such projects--I would suggest that the concept of
"sharing" (information, pleasures, discoveries, etc.) is a potential model
for such a semi-public forum that could profitably replace or qualify a
model of sheer "debate". --N

Nate & Jane Dorward
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109 Hounslow Ave., Willowdale, ON, M2N 2B1, Canada
ph: (416) 221 6865


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