Morning tout le monde:
nothing quite like the text before one as an aid to articulation, so to
amend my mumbled ps, the following observations from a brief reading
prior to last night's sleep.  Prefaced by apologies if this first
connection has already been made (there was a lot on Prynne lately & I'm
not sure if the point was made elsewhere).
1.) The readings were the openings of Kathleen Fraser's "Frammenti
Romani" & the first sentence of "Her Weasels...".   The former's
epigraph is: "marks and evidence of events" which may be pertinent to
P's poem. 
>From Fraser's first three sections & to give its flavour:
	Ache
	drawn border's arousal

		Arise new radio gleeful
		to them
	................
	Repeat the fruited song
	gone wings, what

		is farthest
		hear
	
		~
	Accede shadow able

		redoubtable cycle
	..................
		~
	To accelerate

	(radiant outward from her)

	radial's own wave

	Porcelain light opens

	plum waist, wool-sweet cape of

	thunder's borders.
	....................
Enough, I hope, to give the flavour of that work & to suggest it as a
text behind HWWR (its opening at least, since I've not persued this
right through yet).  "Outward", "cape" & the odd use of "able" appear in
P's first sentence.  Roman Fragments was written in July 1990.
Identifying source-texts, it seems to me, is not frightfully useful or
interesting unless it can illuminate the way a poem or poet works a &
enhance our reading of the work at hand.  Und zo:
2.) This reader anyway finds himself more accepting of the
disjointedness of Fraser's fragments because the spacing/lineation on
the page tells me not to expect close connections, to anticipate the
gaps & leaps in the text.   Because P's line & stanzas visually
re-present a more thoroughly conventional English verse pattern, the
reader is stymied in his/her efforts to make the anticipated sense of
the piece.  To experiment in closing: 

	"At leisure
		for losing outward in
	a glazed toplight
	bringing milk in,

		another fire
	and pragma cape 
			upon them both;

	they'll give 
		driven to marching
	
	with wild fiery 
	streaks 
		able."

Apologies to JHP for this presumption: not suggesting it should be
spaced in any other way than it was written, just a clue for myself, at
least, of a way of approaching the work.  To thwart reader's
expectations & to have us re-examine our habits in that regard, seems a
noble, even Socratic ("Ask yourself questions") enterprise that could
spill over to asking about the assumptions & prejudices by which we live
our lives.
You probably all knew this!  Or it'll seem like an embarrassing midnight
thought later.  Nil desperandum.
Best, Pete


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