I must stress that the Skelton ‘connection’ is tentative in that I haven’t yet re­read the full poem but Rose did become friends with Prynne shortly before her death in 1995 and anyway the riff on the title points firmly in her direction.

The reason why Prynne alienates so many readers is his refusal to ‘flag up’ his obscurities which makes the reader work harder because we have to be aware that a reference is being made. My defence here is that paying attention to Prynne involves thinking in different ways, in rearranging your cognitive ‘set’ and that the obscurities can be followed through, but readers should not expect to arrive at a precise understanding of what might be going on. Some of the reference cues are quoted from at length in the poem and signalled by means of blockquotes, though they are fairly dense and some are equally obscure.

This isn’t to suggest that Prynne’s work should be read as a series of open texts where any understanding is as valid as any other, but it is to point out that perhaps ‘meaning’ isn’t his principal objective and that it’s okay to be baffled.

From my entirely subjective perspective, there is a danger with obscurity in that it can add to elitist notions of coterie and ‘insiderness’. Prior to reading KD I was familiar with and fond of Speke Parrot mainly because I don’t know of anything else like it in English and I’d come across it because I decided to proceed back from Spenser to the Ricardians rather than forward to Dryden and Pope­ Skelton was en route. I was aware of Rose because I’ve read and re­read her Love’s Work : A Reckoning with Life and had tried but failed to get through Mourning Becomes the Law. I therefore felt smug and generally pleased with myself and came a little closer to feeling a little above those readers who were familiar with neither. My point here is that the problem of elitism is a problem for readers and critics in the desire to be a part of that exclusive ‘insideness’ rather than the work itself.

I’ll try and contrast the above with another Prynne experience. His Streak~~~Willing~~~Artesian~~~Entourage sequence makes much use of the word ‘same’. On an initial reading I speculated that, as the sequence deals (at least in part) with the Ulster Troubles, this may refer to the way in which the same tragedy had repeated itself in different forms over the last four hundred years. This was only speculation. However, some years later I came across Goya’s Sera lo Mismo, which is part of his The Disasters of War series concerning the Peninsular War. So, this ‘fits’, which pleases me, but doesn’t make me feel any more a member of the inner circle.

Paul Celan is also noted for his obscurity. I want to give an example that shows readerly ignorance need not detract from taking pleasure in the poem. This is Erblinde, published in the Atemwende collection in 1965:

Go blind now, today:

eternity also is full of eyes ­

in them

drowns what helped images down

the way they came,

in them fades what took you out of language,