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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 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%