Articles by Ed Luker
This article approaches the poetic development between J. H. Prynne’s The
White Stones and Brass.... more This article approaches the poetic development between J. H. Prynne’s The
White Stones and Brass. It explores this development through the use of
cosmology in both books. It traces the figure of the stars across The White
Stones and into their appearance in ‘The Ideal Star-Fighter’ in Brass. It
examines how the stars start as figures of patience and become the
instantiation of an urgent moral imperative. This image of the stars as a figure of eschaton is contrasted to Prynne’s comments on Charles Olson’s Maximus IV, V, VI, to highlight their distinctions. It then articulates how with ‘The Ideal Star-Fighter’ this former cosmological imperative twists into a lament. The poem is examined as a work that exhibits sharp contrasts between two modes of poetic thought, as being trapped between two tendencies within Prynne’s writing. The impossibility of the moral imperative is explored through the context of technological advancements that were made possible by the experiments of scientific cosmology, especially in relation to the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Through close reading of particular poems in combination with archival materials, it aims to contextualise the shift within Prynne’s poetic thought by ventilating the work through its historical context.
This article explores how Connie Scozzaro’s Contrapposto Action Queen (2013) repeatedly takes up ... more This article explores how Connie Scozzaro’s Contrapposto Action Queen (2013) repeatedly takes up two mystifications of femininity from classical mythology, Venus and Lamia, so as to subject them to critique. It takes the images of Venus and Lamia from the writing of two poets, Charles Algernon Swinburne and John Keats. These examples are shown to be epitomes of male poetic fantasy. Within Scozzaro’s collection these fantasies are dissected, undermined, or taken apart through exaggeration, ironization, and the use of tone. The book makes explicit that within patriarchal society, male fantasies are part of a social condition of gendered violence. Contra Brandon Brown’s argument that Contrapposto Action Queen articulates the dialectic of the possible and the actual, this article articulates that for Scozzaro the possible is always conditioned by fantasy. It finishes by looking at Theodor Adorno’s essay ‘Lyric Poetry and Society’. Where Adorno states the lyric subject manifests itself with masculine ‘unrestrained individuation’, this fails to grasp how the lyric poem can utilize strategies of concealment to stress the consequences of the lyric subject’s gendering.
Papers by Ed Luker
Wordsworth, J. H. Prynne and the poetry of universal lamentation. [MA Thesis]
This dissertation analyses Wordsworth’s notion of poetry as a form of universal song of lamentati... more This dissertation analyses Wordsworth’s notion of poetry as a form of universal song of lamentation and joy. Wordsworth’s poetry is posited as a form of poetic materialism where reason and feeling must conjoin, contra Idealist philosophies that denigrate the status of feeling. Wordsworth’s universal song is contrasted to J. H Prynne’s poetic project in ‘The White Stones’ where poetry as universal song is urged for but can never be wholly affirmed. Prynne’s poetry is compared to the poetry of Charles Olson and the philosophy of Martin Heidegger as theories that valorise immediate experience of ‘thingness’. How does Prynne’s poetry valorise the immediate? In what sense is Prynne’s poetry a materialist song? Why can its demands not be fully realized? [Available on request]
Book Reviews by Ed Luker
A review essay of the NYRB republication of J. H. Prynne's book of poetry 'The White Stones', ori... more A review essay of the NYRB republication of J. H. Prynne's book of poetry 'The White Stones', originally published on Blackbox Manifold, Issue 16 (Summer 2016).
Conference Presentations by Ed Luker
In Fred Moten’s essay ‘necessity, immensity, and crisis (many edges/seeing things)’ (2011) he dis... more In Fred Moten’s essay ‘necessity, immensity, and crisis (many edges/seeing things)’ (2011) he discusses the relation between poetry and violence. Moten’s comments call attention to the relation between ‘the poetics of the open field’ and an insurrectionary ‘sociopoetics of riot’. He draws a consideration of the relation between Charles Olson’s poetics and the riot as an act of resistance.
This paper explores the interrelation between Olson and the ‘sociopoetics of riot’ through the work of the contemporary radical British poet, Sean Bonney. It explores the use of the naming of political figures of authority in Bonney's Letters Against the Firmament (2015), especially Iain Duncan Smith, and the imagined radical, social life that the act of naming aims to instantiate. It posits Bonney's socio-poetics of possibility against Olson's cosmology of identity. It explores how Bonney repurposes Olson's use of the naming of figures into a poetics of resistance, conducting a poetic expropriation.
A conference paper submitted to John Beer and Megan Kaminski's 'Contemporary Renovations in Lyric... more A conference paper submitted to John Beer and Megan Kaminski's 'Contemporary Renovations in Lyric' Seminar at the 'Poetics: (The Next) 25 Years' conference at Buffalo, April 9th 2016.
The paper sets up a framework for reading lyric as either private or social by contrasting Mutlu Konuk Blasing's 'Lyric Poetry' to Adorno's 'Lyric Poetry and Society'. Through a close reading of poetry by Connie Scozzaro, Claudia Rankine and Jackqueline Frost, I show how the sociality of lyric is in its instantiation of strategies of refusal and concealment.
The paper explores tropes of utopian thought within literature, through the image of husbandry an... more The paper explores tropes of utopian thought within literature, through the image of husbandry and gardening, to determine that their utopian element lies in their independence from social functionality. That utopianism is compared to the art exhibition ‘Urban Organisms’. On show at New Bridge Gallery in May-June 2015, I specifically focus on Mikey Tomkins’ artpiece-cum-topological study, ‘Making Space for Food: A Vision for Urban Agriculture in Central Newcastle’, an example of art indebted to notions of social function and citizenship. With reference to actually existing agricultural labour relations, I look at the piece’s literary content to examine whom it proposes to imagine a future for. Finally, I propose that J. H. Prynne’s poem ‘The Ideal Star-Fighter’ from Brass (1971) contains a negative citizenship that can be used to subject Tomkins’ naivety to critique.
I have included a postscript, written after the presentation was originally delivered, intended to problematise my own original conclusion. The postscript introduces a dialectic between Adorno’s notion of the “absolute negativity of collapse” and the aesthetic representation of survival, through J. H. Prynne’s claim that Adorno “is mistaken in demanding indelible permanence of the negative”.
Considering ‘Music for Porn’ by Rob Halpern, a collection of poetry about the homoerotic desire f... more Considering ‘Music for Porn’ by Rob Halpern, a collection of poetry about the homoerotic desire for and national love of the figure of the soldier in the present military-industrial imaginings of the United States, this presentation examines what the work of desire might mean in a contemporary critical lyric poetry. This examination is done with reference to Karl Marx, Freud, Walt Whitman’s ‘The Wound Dresser’ as well as criticism on Halpern’s work by Thom Donovan and Brenda Iljima.
Articles and Chapters by Ed Luker
In this editorial essay for a special issue of The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry... more In this editorial essay for a special issue of The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, we introduce the issue’s seven articles, and share some speculations about the nature of the secret in its relation to poetry.
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Articles by Ed Luker
White Stones and Brass. It explores this development through the use of
cosmology in both books. It traces the figure of the stars across The White
Stones and into their appearance in ‘The Ideal Star-Fighter’ in Brass. It
examines how the stars start as figures of patience and become the
instantiation of an urgent moral imperative. This image of the stars as a figure of eschaton is contrasted to Prynne’s comments on Charles Olson’s Maximus IV, V, VI, to highlight their distinctions. It then articulates how with ‘The Ideal Star-Fighter’ this former cosmological imperative twists into a lament. The poem is examined as a work that exhibits sharp contrasts between two modes of poetic thought, as being trapped between two tendencies within Prynne’s writing. The impossibility of the moral imperative is explored through the context of technological advancements that were made possible by the experiments of scientific cosmology, especially in relation to the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Through close reading of particular poems in combination with archival materials, it aims to contextualise the shift within Prynne’s poetic thought by ventilating the work through its historical context.
Papers by Ed Luker
Book Reviews by Ed Luker
Conference Presentations by Ed Luker
This paper explores the interrelation between Olson and the ‘sociopoetics of riot’ through the work of the contemporary radical British poet, Sean Bonney. It explores the use of the naming of political figures of authority in Bonney's Letters Against the Firmament (2015), especially Iain Duncan Smith, and the imagined radical, social life that the act of naming aims to instantiate. It posits Bonney's socio-poetics of possibility against Olson's cosmology of identity. It explores how Bonney repurposes Olson's use of the naming of figures into a poetics of resistance, conducting a poetic expropriation.
The paper sets up a framework for reading lyric as either private or social by contrasting Mutlu Konuk Blasing's 'Lyric Poetry' to Adorno's 'Lyric Poetry and Society'. Through a close reading of poetry by Connie Scozzaro, Claudia Rankine and Jackqueline Frost, I show how the sociality of lyric is in its instantiation of strategies of refusal and concealment.
I have included a postscript, written after the presentation was originally delivered, intended to problematise my own original conclusion. The postscript introduces a dialectic between Adorno’s notion of the “absolute negativity of collapse” and the aesthetic representation of survival, through J. H. Prynne’s claim that Adorno “is mistaken in demanding indelible permanence of the negative”.
Articles and Chapters by Ed Luker