Abstract
In a series of prose works, J. H. Prynne sketches an alternative political economy of poetic production—one that challenges strict divisions between work and play, and between the worlds of adult and child. In the lecture “The Poet’s Imaginary,” Prynne mobilizes the “surprise” that can be found in a genuinely new poem to break the apparently eternal present of a day’s waged labour. In this chapter, Jeschke connects these moments of surprise with an off-hand remark on bird-song found in Prynne’s “Mental Ears and Poetic Work,” to trace a gesture towards a reconciliation of work and play. Decidedly this must remain a mere gesture to avoid what Jacob Taubes calls “the bourgeois apotheosis of culture.” However, insofar as a conceptualization of poetry through work and play is used minutely and unsteadily as a critical vocabulary, a form of movement rather than a settled achievement, such a conceptualization can contribute to a historical economics of speech. That is, it can contribute to the dissection of who gets to speak, who gets to sing, who is heard, and who is silenced as part of always specific capitalist constellations.
This chapter builds on the paper I gave at the Work, Performance, Poetry Symposium at Northumbria University in 2015, as well as my PhD dissertation: Theatricality and J.H. Prynne’s Work (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2015). I am grateful for the feedback, comments, and dialogue received in both contexts; the errors that persist are my own.
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Notes
- 1.
J. H. Prynne, “The Poet’s Imaginary,” Chicago Review, vol. 58, no. 1 (2013), 94. Presented as a lecture at Sussex University, 12 February 2013.
- 2.
Prynne, “The Poet’s Imaginary,” 89.
- 3.
Prynne, “The Poet’s Imaginary,” 89.
- 4.
Chris Chen, “The Limit Points of Capitalist Equality,” in Endnotes 3 (September 2013), 207.
- 5.
Chen, “The Limit Points of Capitalist Equality,” 212.
- 6.
Also see Prynne’s following note: “harmony is not part of nature. It can have no meaning to say that one tree is in harmony with another, or that summer is in harmony with winter, unless the meaning is man-made” (J. H. Prynne, “A Brief Comment on ‘Harmony’ in Architecture” [Xi’An, P.R. China, 23 September 2006], www.cai.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/harmony.pdf, 1, accessed 23 March 2018).
- 7.
Especially the person-based nominalization of “creative” in phrases such as “spaces for creatives” seems to attribute an essence of creativity to the elect; see, for instance, “Best Coworking Spaces in London for Creatives and Makers,” Hubble, hubblehq.com/blog/best-co-working-space-in-london-for-creatives-and-makers, last modified 18 January 2018. If anything, all workplaces should be spaces for creatives; this demand is currently being pseudo-realized in exclusive form at the higher levels of digital economy workplaces. At the time of revising this essay in March 2018, the Google careers page features a header in which the words “for everyone” remain stable in grey and are preceded, in alternation and with changing colours, by “Build,” “Create,” “Design,” “Code.” See “Google Careers,” Google, careers.google.com, accessed 27 March 2018.
- 8.
Prynne, “The Poet’s Imaginary,” 97.
- 9.
Endnotes, “Error,” in Bad Feelings, ed. Arts Against Cuts (London, 2016), n.p.
- 10.
Leisure appears less totally enclosed within regimes of work in Prynne than in Adorno, who notes: “free time is shackled to its opposite” (Theodor W. Adorno, “Free Time,” translated by Nicholas Walker, in The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. J. M. Bernstein [London and New York: Routledge], 187).
- 11.
On plant time as a form of time that can go both forward and backward in Prynne’s “The Plant Time Manifold Transcripts” (1974), see Justin Katko, “Relativistic Phytosophy: Towards a Commentary on ‘The Plant Time Manifold Transcripts’,” in Glossator 2: On the Poems of J.H. Prynne, ed. Ryan Dobran (New York: Glossator, 2010).
- 12.
J. H. Prynne, “Mental Ears and Poetic Work,” Chicago Review, vol. 55, no. 1 (2010), 128. Presented as a lecture at the University of Chicago, April 2009.
- 13.
J. H. Prynne, Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words (London: Birkbeck, 1993), 27. Presented as The William Matthews Lectures at Birkbeck College, London, 1992.
- 14.
“The Tyger” was originally part of Songs of Experience; see William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience [1794], ed. Robert N. Essick (San Marino, CA: Huntington, 2008), Plate 40. Prynne uses as foundation of his discussion the re-print from Benjamin Heath Malkin, A Father’s Memories of His Child (London: Bensley, 1806), from which “Dorothy and William Wordsworth copied out the poem into their commonplace book” (Prynne, Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words, 51).
- 15.
Prynne, Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words, 27.
- 16.
The desk- and computer-based work that has replaced the work of the engraver is no less manual.
- 17.
Prynne, “Mental Ears and Poetic Work,” 128.
- 18.
J. H. Prynne, “A Brief Comment on ‘Harmony’ in Architecture,” 1–2.
- 19.
See the fifteenth letter in Friedrich Schiller, Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen [1801] (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2013), 58–64.
- 20.
Rosa Luxemburg, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, ed. Georg Adler, Peter Hudis, and Annelies Laschitza, translated by George Shriver (London and New York: Verso, 2013), 450. I am grateful to Luke Roberts for pointing me to the recurring significance of bird-song in Luxemburg’s letters and to this passage.
- 21.
“American Crow: Sounds,” Cornell Lab of Ornithology, www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Crow/sounds, accessed 23 March 2018. Sub Songs is also the title of a poetry sequence by Prynne from 2010: see J. H. Prynne, Poems (Hexham, Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2015), 607–626.
- 22.
The German and English quotations above and below are taken from the poem’s translation in Eduard Mörike, Mozart’s Journey to Prague and a Selection of Poems, translated by David Luke (London: Penguin, 2003), Kindle. Where further alternatives are given, these are my own. I have given the line numbers from the German. The translation features slightly variant line numbers.
- 23.
There is a song-realization of the poem, namely Hugo Wolf’s Lied of the same title forming part of his Mörike-Lieder from 1888. See Jack M. Stein, “Poem and Music in Hugo Wolf’s Mörike Songs,” The Musical Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 1 (January 1967), 22–27.
- 24.
Helmuth Nürnberger notes that while “Mörike’s timeless art forms, as it were, an opposite pole to the demands made by the political poetry committed to the present that, from 1840, increasingly dominated the events of the day,” it was nevertheless “a misunderstanding” for Mörike to have long been seen merely “as the sentimental pastor now and then writing beautiful verse” (Helmuth Nürnberger, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur [Munich: Bayerischer Schulbuch Verlag, 2006], 229–230, my translation).
- 25.
Prynne, “A Brief Comment on ‘Harmony’ in Architecture,” 1–2.
- 26.
T. J. Clark, Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 71.
- 27.
This is the formulation used in Google’s careers site quoted in footnote 7 above.
- 28.
Jacob Taubes, “Kultur und Ideologie,” in Spätkapitalismus oder Industriegesellschaft? Verhandlungen des 16. Deutschen Soziologentages, ed. Theodor W. Adorno (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1969), 121–122, my translation. How might this economic foundation be touched? Perhaps by appropriating the gardens of those that owe us. This hint, at least, is given by Rihanna’s music video “Bitch Better Have My Money” (2015), which presents a self-conscious synthesis of bird-song’s image as indicative of privileged leisure only so as to launch from this imagery an attack against white privilege. The beginning and the end of the video shows Rihanna lying on top of a trunk, covered in blood and money, smoking a cigar, the faux-innocent bird-song marking her killing of the accountant, the “bitch” (played by Mads Mikkelsen), who has not paid her. The lyrics express Rihanna’s claim to payment that has been withheld from her as a worker. Motifs of political dissent merge with motifs of a pop-cultural revenge violence taken to an extreme. Not least, a policeman is repeatedly tricked in the video, which may be read as an expression of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement: even if this is highly monied capitalist art, the video’s stakes exceed aesthetic representation. See Rihanna, “Bitch Better Have My Money (Explicit),” video, 07:01, www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3eAMGXFw1o, published 1 July 2015, accessed 12 January 2017.
- 29.
Prynne, Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words, 9–10.
- 30.
Prynne, Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words, 10–11.
- 31.
Prynne, Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words, 10.
- 32.
Prynne, Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words, 11.
- 33.
Silvia Federici, Wages Against Housework (Bristol: Power of Women Collective and Falling Wall Press, 1975).
- 34.
Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, translated by Anna Bostock (London: NLB, 1973), 34.
Works Cited
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Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience [1794]. Edited by Robert N. Essick. San Marino, CA: Huntington, 2008.
Chen, Chris. “The Limit Points of Capitalist Equality.” Endnotes, vol. 3 (September 2013): 202–223.
Clark, T. J. Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1999.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “American Crow: Sounds.” www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Crow/sounds. Accessed 23 March 2018.
Endnotes. “Error.” In Bad Feelings, edited by Arts Against Cuts, n.p. London, 2016.
Federici, Silvia. Wages Against Housework. Bristol: Power of Women Collective and Falling Wall Press, 1975.
Google. “Google Careers.” careers.google.com. Accessed 27 March 2018.
Hubble. “Best Coworking Spaces in London for Creatives and Makers.” hubblehq.com/blog/best-co-working-space-in-london-for-creatives-and-makers. Last modified 18 January 2018.
Jeschke, Lisa. Theatricality and J.H. Prynne’s Work. PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2015.
Katko, Justin. “Relativistic Phytosophy: Towards a Commentary on ‘The Plant Time Manifold Transcripts’.” In Glossator 2: On the Poems of J.H. Prynne, edited by Ryan Dobran, 245–293. New York: Glossator, 2010.
Luxemburg, Rosa. The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg. Edited by Georg Adler, Peter Hudis, and Annelies Laschitza. Translated by George Shriver. London and New York: Verso, 2013.
Mörike, Eduard. Mozart’s Journey to Prague and a Selection of Poems. Translated by David Luke. London: Penguin, 2003. Kindle.
Nürnberger, Helmuth. Geschichte der deutschen Literatur. Munich: Bayerischer Schulbuch Verlag, 2006.
Oxford English Dictionary. www.oed.com.
Prynne, J. H. “A Brief Comment on ‘Harmony’ in Architecture” [Xi’An, P.R. China, 23 September 2006]. www.cai.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/harmony.pdf. Accessed 23 March 2018.
———. “Mental Ears and Poetic Work.” Chicago Review, vol. 55, no. 1 (2010): 126–157.
———. Poems. Hexham, Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2015.
———. “The Poet’s Imaginary.” Chicago Review, vol. 58, no. 1 (2013): 89–105.
———. Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words. London: Birkbeck, 1993.
Rihanna. “Bitch Better Have My Money (Explicit).” Video, 07:01. www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3eAMGXFw1o. Published 1 July 2015, accessed 12 January 2017.
Schiller, Friedrich. Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen [1801]. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2013.
Stein, Jack M. “Poem and Music in Hugo Wolf’s Mörike Songs.” The Musical Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 1 (January 1967): 22–38.
Taubes, Jacob. “Kultur und Ideologie.” In Spätkapitalismus oder Industriegesellschaft? Verhandlungen des 16. Deutschen Soziologentages, edited by Theodor W. Adorno, 117–138. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1969.
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Jeschke, L. (2019). Bird-Song by Everyone, for Everyone: Poetry, Work, and Play in J. H. Prynne’s Prose. In: Walton, J., Luker, E. (eds) Poetry and Work. Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26125-2_3
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