dumbfoundry

From Through the oval window (Guardian): "Robert Potts on why the famously obscure poet Jeremy Prynne deserves wider acclaim in the UK"

Although Prynne has a sizeable following in England, it sometimes feels as if his international reputation is much larger: in France, the US and, markedly, in China. When the French poet Jérôme Game, the reading's organiser, introduced Prynne it was as the most important living English poet: the same claim some critics perceived in Randall Stevenson's recent Oxford English Literary History, and which launched an unlikely flurry of media interest recently.

and

Part of the pleasure for some readers, including myself, is the discovery of fresh vantage points on the world, garnered from chasing references in the poems, whether historical, musical, literary, scientific or economic. As one reader has said, "the experience I always get reading Prynne, going to the dictionary and the encyclopedia, is the excitement I was cheated out of by my education, having it all served up, rather than, like my grandfather, finding it out for myself (after work) with great effort and little societal encouragement."

and

The recent controversy over Prynne's merits has made more people aware of his work, at a time when all of it is easily available. It is undeniable that his poetry offers both pleasures and challenges of an unusually complex kind: and it is for precisely this reason that many people will testify, without hyperbole or sentimentality, that his poetry has changed their lives.

Also, a bit of Triodes.

This entry was posted by eeksypeeksy on Saturday, April 10, 2004 at 11:18 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.