I Do Not Understand

J. H. Prynne

Kitchen Poems by J. H. Prynne

This is one of these slight works which, despite being brief, at least in form, are possessed of great depths and density. Many might say — I’m not among them — that this book is more a series of segmented essays than a collection of poetry. It’s less debatable that this reads, mostly, more like prose than verse. With long stanzas more like paragraphs — a flat, unemotional, seemingly unaffected style. A strange persona adopted.

It’s hard to explain J. H. Prynne. When I lived in Cambridge, a few years ago now, I would see him going out his daily business, walking in a very distinctive way, instantly visible. He always seemed to have an intensity about him, as if he was thinking of something beyond the cobbles and the streets. Beyond the rest of us. A man who, in his time, has played many parts.

But this is an early collection and ought to be thought of, not as the near-beginning of an immense career of writing, but instead as what it represented at the time. Something suggests; ideas floated. The name attached not yet carved in granite.

So much of what we have here, in this book, is almost scientific. Think of C. P. Snow’s novels of the engineers. Redolent of the scientific method, of what is cold and precise and also, sometimes, dull. Talk in ‘Die a Millionaire’ about the nature of engineering. The ratios, grids. Things having to be worked out to the millimetre, to the smallest Newton of force. All of life — every endeavour of life — is akin to a mathematical process. Something to be diagrammed out and considered. There are weights on both sides. And as for your own position — in employment, in love, in your friendships — think of all the competing factors. There is your own competitiveness to be considered, factored in! Do always think at least a little about that.

Even our private galvanic impulses — ambition, desire — they are mapped by charts and by measures. Someone has designed a scientific instrument to measure ambition in men, or love in women.

But it is not, of course, all about you. There is a whole world out there, a world system. An order to things. A system that takes in cubic feet of gas from China, from the Soviet Union. And quite naturally and clearly, when one considers the industrial situation east of Suez, one looks at the whole business in quite another light. Does one not?

There are strange little affectations that strike a scientific mind.

One could fall to the floor in relief and joy when thinking about coal. The processes of its extraction — its tolerances and its foibles, all plotted out on a chart or two. The thing itself — carbon atoms, arranged just so. And one could calculate, by volume, or in moles, the precise BTUs of energy produced. Every watt of power; and every joule of energy. All might be measured. It’s enough to make a man cry.

All must be calculated. All must be made clear and made to account. Think of the household budget — quite a scientific thing. Think of the expenses of gas and water. Think of the expenses of a whole street, of a whole town, of a whole country. There is so much to ponder, so much to consider. And all we must do is to learn the formulae, and to call things by their proper names.

It really is as simple as that.

Meanwhile, the numbers themselves tremble. In a sense, the numbers are in trouble. We live in cities of numbers. Days had and accounted for, days gone and days to come. The instincts that keep us with those we love, living where we do. All are numeric, all are calculable.

Numerically, we can strike the elite from ‘the rest’ all we like. But as things break down and get difficult — as data, tortured beyond belief, tends to do — it all gets difficult to see.

Things break down. ‘And the question of “exchange” is thereby / also dismantled.’

The numbers suffer. And meanwhile the words that the scientists use are, in their own way, under threat. The author wonders about linguistic precision. Who said that natural gas is natural? Who claimed it? That the vapour run-off, collected and condensed by man for his own ends, is considered natural — it defies logic: logic formal and linguistic.

This, and other things, are ‘banal folly.’ Other follies at least have the relative virtue of being different. Outré.

Meanwhile, we all might consider the self less as a construct — per some neuroscientists — or as a persona, the mask becoming the face (as some say); but instead as a financial project. The kind of thing one can account for. Think of it. Neat ordered list. Bullet points. Clauses and subclauses, attempting to tot up and to balance effects. Think of the effects of music on the self. We might allot music some more percentage points, or give it more weighting, a higher number, in the balance sheet.

‘[T]his is the shining grudge of numbers.’ That perhaps they are not art.

I did not understand this book. It went clearly and cleanly over my head.