“Prynne presents a body of work of staggering audacity and authority such that the map of contemporary poetry already begins to look a little different.” Roger Caldwell, TLS
I’m new to Prynne’s poetry and haven’t yet gotten a knack for how to read and interpret the more recent ones. This means I, more than not, don’t have a clue about the author’s intention (which shouldn’t matter anyway, so some say).
Which also means I get to interpret his lines far more in my own terms than others might like. Take the following stanza:
Indefatigable, certainly impracticable, chronic unretractable, spree; indistinguishable epiphenomenal dink-di flunk, rhetic; insurmountable, unaccountable, incommensurate, providentially, turn up your nose as we suppose, environmentalism, fiddle-de-dee.
Whatever this means to others, to me it’s a clear example of how many advocates for and against environmentalism overstate their case through argument by adjective and adverb.
Or consider a different stanza:
Casting out terror leaves a vacant spot, your care-free jubilation to out-jest these heart-struck injuries, mimic new disasters; they crowd like fresh battalions, eager spies trying our patience, good out-runs the best.
I interpret “casting out terror leaves a vacant spot” to mean that once we lose widespread social dread over large sociotechnical disasters like nuclear plant explosions, we vacate any notion of reliably managing such extremely hazardous systems.
There are, of course, those who celebrate such an eventuality–think of them as eager spies for the other side. But the loss of reliable infrastructures also does injury and harm to many more other people. Indeed, new disasters arise (imagine the effects of a society no longer fearful of jet planes dropping like flies from the air). The new disasters would “crowd like fresh battalions” and “try our patience” by way of increased calls for different policy and management interventions.
But note Prynne’s “good out-runs the best” as a consequence. For many trained in policy analysis, such as myself, the best is the enemy of the good. That is, better to have good enough when the best is not achievable.
The notion that the best is achievable, even in (especially in?) disasters, highlights a state of affairs not often publicized. Namely, disasters are a way to get rid of legacy infrastructures and components that, under other circumstances, one is precluded from doing so because of existing regulation and law. These would be suspended during the emergency.
My readings too far-stretched, you think? For me, Prynne’s words read as if they are the only ones left legible on the surface of a thick, many-layered palimpsest. A lot has been effaced or scored away below. My point here is that those very same words are also left undissolved on policy palimpsests with which I am familiar. I thank the poet for such permeable texts.
Source.
J.H. Prynne (2024). Poems 2016 – 2024. Bloodaxe Books, UK (pages 508, 536).
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 
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