Breaking down in fits and starts: navigating a good naturalisation of J. H. Prynne’s ‘Blue Slides at Rest’ (2004)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses J. H. Prynne’s ‘Blue Slides at Rest’ (2004) in relation to his own poetic theories. By bringing together Prynne’s poetry and theory, I show how ‘Blue Slides at Rest’ encourages a special type of reading: increasingly close rereading. Sense is made at multiple levels: words, syllables, even letters come together to signify in unconventional ways. Turning to Veronica Forrest-Thomson’s theory of ‘good naturalisation’, I demonstrate how each type of closer reading integrates and elucidates previously obscure elements of the poem. At the level of words (where the familiar sense-making of intertext occurs) and at the level of syllables (where the less familiar sense-making of diachronic phonology occurs), my analysis fits in well between Prynne and Forrest-Thomson’s theories. But by reading even more closely, at the level of letters, I argue additionally that ‘Blue Slides at Rest’ evolves Prynne’s poetic theory.