Jeremy Halvard (better known at J.H.) Prynne is an English poet whose name seemed to keep appearing in articles and interviews. He wasn’t widely published, but he seemed almost to be the unwilling leader of a cult built around himself or perhaps a shibboleth for the kinds of readers looking for someone to continue to work begun by Paul Celan.

My understanding is that he has primarily been published in small locally published (he lives in Cambridge and was an instructor and librarian one of the university’s colleges) slim volumes and chapbooks that didn’t stray too far from the region or a small coterie of readers. Basically, the only thing really available in America (and it wasn’t easy to get mind you) is a collected works simply entitled Poems. Nonetheless, he has inspired a pretty darn impressive volume of secondary literature.

The influence of Celan is pretty obvious, the discursive, recursive, elliptically revolving ‘subject.’ But whereas so much Celan’s work revolved around a single, terrible historical event, Prynne is much wider ranging, covering the geographical and philosophical history of the British isles. At least, I think it does. I won’t lie – I can’t be entirely sure.

You see, I can’t be sure, most of the time, what he’s talking about. He quite consciously resists easy meaning.

Which makes it hard to explain why I like it, but damn do I like it. I can see why folks would seek him out as an act of pilgrimage. He’s building something, he holds the key to something. I don’t necessarily know what, but I can see its beauty – and it’s terror (in the Aristotleian sense).