Met die groeiende (wêreldwye) aanvraag na meer toeganklike poësie en die gepaardgaande kommersialisering daarvan, is die sub-genre van die digkuns wat tans erg bedreig word, sekerlik die sogenaamde hermetiese vers. Ook in ons eie digkuns is daar al kommer oor dié aangeleentheid uitgespreek.
J.H. Prynne, lid van die sogenaamde “Cambridge School”, word (glo) allerweë beskou as Brittanje se mees hermetiese digter en pas het daar ‘n belangrike fokus-artikel oor dié ietwat kontroversiële digter in die Sunday Times verskyn; ‘n digterskap wat eweneens deur niemand minder as Craig Raine in ‘n onlangse artikel krities bevraagteken is nie. Raine het onder andere soos volg na die “Cambridge-digters’ verwys: “A postmodern poetic school led by J. H. Prynne whose purpose is to be difficult – emulatively difficult. (Not difficult to be difficult, actually)”.
Nogtans wil dit voorkom asof nóg Prynne, nóg die Cambridge-groep ignoreer kan word.
Robert Potts, skrywer van die oorsigartikel in die Sunday Times, stel dit soos volg: “Prynne’s poetry is difficult and obscure because his work is both radical and extreme. It is radical because he is a philological poet: when he uses a word, he does so in full knowledge of its etymological resonances, its historical usages, and its literary echoes.” Aan die einde van sy artikel sê hy: “The reason why Prynne’s later poems are so challenging is that his work has increasingly offered a high-speed polyphonic approach, with phrases and quotations overlapping or interrupted (“a dialectic with the laterals marked in” as he once put it); and the astonishing economy with which he now disposes his hard-won words means that even his shortest poems are now carrying alarmingly extensive hinterlands of epic debate. It is still possible to say what these poems are about; it remains unlikely that anyone will or can be sure what they mean.”
Inderdaad, ‘n fassinerende artikel wat ‘n mens op ‘n manier herinner aan ‘n waarheid wat T.S. Eliot eenmaal kwytgeraak het: “Genuine poetry moves before it is understood.” As lusmaker plaas ek ‘n gedig van Prynne onder aan vanoggend se Nuuswekker. Dié gedig, saam met ‘n bespreking daarvan deur John Kinsella, gaan gelees word op Jacket Magazine se webtuiste.
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Sedert gister het daar drie besonderse plasings op die webblad bygekom: Philip de Vos skryf oor die sekretarisvoël se eksistensiële vraag; Jelleke Wierenga skryf oor die grondbeginsel van geluk en Marius Crous verwonder hom aan die kat, synde die psigopaat van die diereryk.
En dan moet jy ook nie Bibi Slippers se kostelike resensie van die Versindaba 2010-gedenkbundel, wat vanjaar deur die US Woordfees saamgestel is, mislees nie; dit het by LitNet verskyn.
Hê pret met alles. Die week is al weer amper daarmee heen …
Mooi bly.
LE
Rich in Vitamine C
Under her brow the snowy wing-case
delivers truly the surprise
of days which slide under sunlight
past loose glass in the door
into the reflection of honour spread
through the incomplete, the trusted. So
darkly the stain skips as a livery
of your pause like an apple pip,
the baltic loved one who sleeps.
Or as syrup in a cloud, down below in
the cup, you excuse each folded
cry of the finch’s wit, this flush
scattered over our slant of the
day rocked in water, you say
this much. A waver of attention at
the surface, shews the arch there and
the purpose we really cut;
an ounce down by the water, which
in cross-fire from injustice too large
to hold he lets slither
from starry fingers
noting the herbal jolt of cordite
and its echo: is this our screen, on some
street we hardly guessed could mark
an idea bred to idiocy by the clear
sight-lines ahead. You come in
by the same door, you carry
what cannot be left for its own
sweet shimmer of reason, its false blood;
the same tint I hear with the pulse it touches
and will not melt. Such shading
of the rose to its stock tips the bolt
from the sky, rising in its effect of what
motto we call peace talks. And yes the
quiet turn of your page is the day
tilting so, faded in the light.
© J.H. Prynne