J.H. Prynne 1936-2026

J.H. Prynne died on Wednesday at the age of 89, after a prolific life as a teacher and essayist, a loyal friend to his students and, above all, a poet of great stature whose remains will not be transferred to Westminster Abbey.

When the heart stops, its business concluded
    there’s not much to do, however deluded;
immortal longings, like belongings,
    abandon their fate at the turnstile’s gate.

                                                                Poem 48, Snooty Tipoffs (2021)

The landscape of English poetry changed after the publication of Prynne’s second book, Kitchen Poems, in 1968. His later writing found a wide, eclectic readership. There were opaque, exquisite experiments in lyric, on the one hand, and, on the other, long, argumentative pieces, densely intuitive, often obscure, inviting readers to consider how the poem was supposed to address the world, if it could rise to the occasion. 

From ‘The Numbers’, Kitchen Poems (1968):

              … we are
                small / in the rain,
                open or without it,
                          the light in de-
light, as with pleasure amongst not merely
the word, one amongst them; but the
skin over the points, of the bone.
That’s where we have it & should
                diminish: I am no
                more, than custom,
                which is the vital
& signal, again, as if we tie into
so many voices. Wish for them:
elect the principal, we must take
aim. That now is the life, which
                is diffused, out of
                how we are too
                surrounded, unhopeful.

From Day Light Songs (1968):

And the hill is a
                    figure, dust in the
           throat
                    did you say that
           or was
                    it merely spoken
           as love a thirst for
this and both together the
                    morning

From ‘Love in the Air’, The White Stones (1969):

We are easily disloyal, again, and the light
touch is so quickly for us, it does permit
what each one would give in the royal
use of that term. Given, settled and
broken, under the day’s sun: that’s the pur-
pose of the gleam from my eyes, cloud from
the base of the spine. Whose silent
watching was all spent, all foregone –
the silver and wastage could have told you
and allowed the touch to pass. Over the
brow, over the lifting feature of how
slant in the night.
                                That’s how we
are disloyal, without constancy to the little
play and hurt in the soul. Being less than
strict in our gaze; the day flickers and
thins and contracts, oh yes and thus does
get smaller, and smaller: the northern
winter is an age for us and the owl of
my right hand is ready for flight. I have
already seen its beating search in the sky,
hateful, I will not look. By our lights
we stand to the sudden pleasure of how
the colour is skimmed to the world, and our
life does lie as a fallen and slanted thing.

From ‘The Bee Target on his Shoulder’, Brass (1971):

Gratefully they evade the halflight
rising from me, on the frosty abyss.
Rub your fingers with chalk and
grass, linctus over the ankle, now TV with
the sound off & frame hold in
reason beyond that. Paste. Thereby take
the foretaste of style, going naked
wherever commanded, by
                        the father struck
                        in the plain. His
                        wavy boots glow
                        as he matches
                        the headboard.
Do not love this man. He makes
Fridays unbearable, with the
ominous dullness of the gateway
to the Spanish garden …

From Wound Response (1974):

As grazing the earth
                                        the sun raises
its mouth to the night
                                           rick, ox-eye’d
and burning, strewn over
                                                 the phase path

At the turning-places
                                          of the sun the
head glistens, dew falls
                                              from the apse line:

O lye still, thou
                              Little Musgrave, the
grass is wet
                       and streak’d with light