Chastened by Peter Riley`s number three - the cap fits so I`m
sporting it at a jaunty angle...
I`m interested in examining the ways in which critics of Prynne, as
they register their own dismay in front of apparently intransigent
material, have already decided and are about to decide again to
revise that dismay and that apparent intransigence in the direction
of a conjured "authority", identified with JHP, an "authority" that is in practice
authoritarian because it scuppers the possibility of exercising their
own critical franchise. What we get instead of criticism (and this
is where my paper seems almost as historically necessary as your own)
is a kind of citation, where cuttings less than a line long are taken
and re-potted in an often crudely shaped, um, ethico-political, er,
grow-bag (time to ditch this metaphor) to generate an "opinion."
I look at Stars, Tigers, and the Shape of Words but more especially
the Discourse on the de Kooning painting to show how Prynne`s own
critical practice never resorts to the registration of a "resistance"
which is recuperated as the Mysterious Gift We Never Even Knew We Wanted
or as a brave if precarious stand against the endless attempts of the
market to throw cash at us.
What else? Problems I have with guesses at "ethical" (yawn)
significances for works which are just not determinate enough to "be"
ethical. I think, I hope there`s a bit more to it than that when I
go back to it. There`s a tentative paddle in Not-You.
So, probably not a kick in the arse off your own project. Your
"antagonistic preparation &c." (and much else) sounds promising. I
wonder, tho`, how much the definition of poetry you posted earlier
has been made-to-measure, to order, in order that, say, Her Weasels Wild
Returning can be dubbed A Really Good Poem. If "poetry exists as
opportunity for and of content &c." it might condemn a lot of other work
to the status of Portentous Information. This was the gist of my
earlier glib response to that definition. Can we be antagonistically
prepared at a more general level; is antagonism the right attitude to
adopt to a sequence as a whole, or is it only tenable at the level of
an individual syntagma`s forking paths?
I`d be happy to send you a copy of the paper, Keston; but only once
it is revised.
all best
robin
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