Letter: JH Prynne obituary
The notoriously “opaque, hermetic, impenetrable [and] forbidding” poetry of Jeremy Prynne might lead one to assume that his character was similarly austere. Yet nothing could be further from the truth,...
By Stephen Moss · The Guardian Opinion
The notoriously “opaque, hermetic, impenetrable [and] forbidding” poetry of Jeremy Prynne might lead one to assume that his character was similarly austere. Yet nothing could be further from the truth, as I discovered during my first term studying English literature at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in autumn 1979. Sitting in his book-lined study, as he rigorously dissected Sir Walter Raleigh’s As You Came from the Holy Land , was an experience I shall never forget. Verse by verse, then line by line, and word by word, he unravelled the hidden meanings within this deceptively simple poem. Continue reading...