a commentary on j.stronghstrong. prynne’s “thoughts on the esterh#225;zy court.pdfVIP

ON THE POEMS OFJ.H. PRYNNE A COMMENTARY ONJ.H. PRYNNE’S “THOUGHTS ON THE ESTERHÁZY COURT UNIFORM” Robin Purves “Thoughts on the Esterházy Court Uniform” (Poems 99-100) as it appeared in Peter Manson’s copy of Tim Longville and Andrew Crozier’s anthology, A Various Art, was the first poem by J.H. Prynne that I frequently reread. The exact nature of the connection I felt to the poem is difficult to recall since I came across it in 1995 but I believe that I began to appreciate in going back to it repeatedly an obscurely registered but intimate apprehension of a perfected accord between its verbal music and the quality of its thought, without at the time being able to express the distinction of either. Prynne’s poem seems both to have seduced me and communicated something, since I recall rereading it in order to deliver myself from certain kinds of mood or to enter the particular frame of mind the poem was adept at provoking. Comprehension of the text is a more arduous process to undergo than administering it to yourself as a kind of homoeopathic remedy and attaining the state where you are able to explain what you think you understand of the poem is more difficult yet; this commentary is the index of just how far these operations have got, and how far they still have to go. In the first sentence, the poem’s implied speaker continues to perform an ongoing activity; he walks on up the hill, to continue the previous poem or poems in The White Stones via the allusion to an ascent of Helicon, a mountain sacred to the Muses, and to a literal, upward-sloping progress across a surface of the earth. We are not much more than teased by the latter possibility in men