When J.H. Prynne travelled to Bangkok last year he took with him a laptop and a copy of Parsegian’s book Van der Waals Forces; A Handbook for Biologists, Chemists, Engineers, and Physicists (Cambridge, 2006). When he returned it was with a carefully hand-written manuscript which would in turn become his most recent published sequence, Kazoo Dreamboats. The reference cues at the end of this extraordinarily moving piece of poetic prose range from Parmenides and Aristotle to Boethius and Wordsworth:
The corridor is and to be the avenue, from particulate vapour to consign into bedrock, transit of durance it is a formative exit in naturalised permission, solemn grade-one rigmarole, better Wiglaf’s rebuke and insurance payout. To be this with sweet song and dance in the exit dream, sweet joy befall thee is by rotation been and gone into some world of light exchange, toiling and spinning and probably grateful, in this song.
This important publication can be found as one of the Critical Documents available from Justin Katko at Queens’ College, Cambridge. The website to aim for is http://plantarchy.us
Tears in the Fence 