Uh, break-dancing? UR such a doood, JT!
Okay, where are we in this ruptural rapture of yours? A--or rather
THE break, I guess your saying--between _Force of Circumstance_
and _Kitchen Poems_: yes, agreed, although you can see something
faintly dawnish breaking (haha) near the end of _Circumstance_,
such as the potential role of song, for instance.
Now your second break/dancin' around _Brass_, which you now want
to style as more of "a distancing gesture" and point to that book's
epigraph doing the trick; again, I'd agree about some sort of tonal
shift and one that sounds like "aha!" to my ear. I think it has
something to do with French, but not wanting another onset (in the
Irish sense) to ensue as it did the last time I raised it here, let
me just drop that subject, toot sweet.
On the "Conscience of England," however, I would like to ask if
the question is not "what conscience" but what ENGLAND? (What say,
JT?) Remember who "saddled" our pony with it, speaking of "sardonic":
Wasn't it Mr SinSardoniclair (or am I Miss Remembering)? And wasn't
the epithet originally applied not to Prynne _precisely_, but rather
to that simplex Pi-man Simon Undark in _Radon Daughters_? If so,
whose "gesture" is it, then, or, who's under that saddle and who's
sitting pretty atop it?
Witches to say TRICK or TREAT?
Candice
>Hi Candice,
> 'Dissociation-of-sensibility' arbitrary bullshit underlying most
>'break'dancing, it's good to get your reaction. The only true _break_ in
>jhp's career is between a 'disavowed' early book (remember that Holman Hunt?
>painting- 'your child, Sir'?) and what followed. And timely for Nate to
>remind us of that, I'd say.
> What I most had in mind, I think, was that epigraph to _Brass_, hard to
>see as other than sardonic, and-- while maybe a little short of 'no more Mr.
>nice guy!'-- still a distancing gesture from that everpresent ethical
>urgency of the early poetry, which as Robin Purves points out (in The Gig
>#2) continues to saddle him with that 'The Conscience of England' (what
>conscience??) handle: 'On eut crié 'bravo! Ouvrage bien morale! Nous étions
>sauvés'. David Kennedy's post (The Less Received) reminds us that we could
>resist the urge to scratch,
>
>All best,
>John
>
>
>
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