Beginning an analysis of J.H. Prynne’s “Orchard” (2020)
32 pages. Twenty-five poems, titled after various edible fruits. Litho printed text, with risographed wrappers printed by Earthbound Press, depicting The Magic Apple Tree (c. 1830), by Samuel Palmer, by permission of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Designed and typeset at Face Press, and published by Equipage, December 2020.
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For Ian Heames, who kindly invited me to Cambridge for the enjoyment of poetry, blackberries from the bush, and a dialogue on planning and providence in pig farming and fishing.
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Thus passed his hours with more delight and ease,/ Than if the riches of the world were his.
Theocritus Idyll 11th, Englished by Mr. Duke of Cambridge, 1685
He removes his shepherd’s clothing to reveal his armour beneath.
Stage direction in Tamburlaine Part One, Christopher Marlowe, 1590
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Techniques within each verse
The epigraph to this collection of poems called Orchard is taken from an epistolary poem by the Cambridge poet Thomas Randolph (1605–1635), which is an invitation to his friend Master Anthony Stafford, in the form of an ode, ‘to Hasten him into the Country’ from London, and enjoy the pleasures it has to offer, the details of which Randolph proceeds to adumbrate as an enticement.[1] Much in the same way, Jeremy Prynne offers in each of the verses in this collection a taste of one of the fruits to be enjoyed from the orchard he invites us to enjoy.
Each numbered verse in the sequence follows a regular pattern, having six lines, the first with a hanging indent, and the remainder justified to the left. As originally published by Equipage, there is one verse per page. No words are capitalised. Some of the verses have commas, but never more than two, and there are no full stops or other punctuation marks other than some hyphenated compound words. Lines vary a little in metre and length, but are all similar in terms of the number of syllables.
One of the first things the reader may notice is that each verse’s titular fruit is reflected in different ways in the verse itself, with varying emphasis from one verse to another, and sometimes involving adjacent words. Techniques involve full inclusion (appearing in Pear, plumage in Plum), inclusion of a fragment (ferry in Cherry, thimble, preamble in Bramble, derangement, angel in Orange, rant, cursive in Currant, outreach, preach in Peach, melodrama, felon in Melon, agreement in Green-gage, more, tell onin Morello, hasp, wherry in Raspberry, raw, err in Strawberry, quiet, inch, in cell, wince in Quince, marine, within ecstatic great prince in Nectarine, rapid, rap in Grape), retrograde of a fragment (if gifted in Fig, demean in Medlar, par in Grapes), anagram of a fragment or whole (e.g. mason, ransom in Damson, manage, fragrant in Orange, tricotage in Apricot, merry ultimate in Mulberry, deal me, aim led along in Medlar, one rutile in Prune, melic in Lime, aspen in Grapes), slant rhyme (leman in Lemon), or else semantic association with various degrees of directness (purple in Damson, achene in Strawberry, yellow in Lemon, ascorbic and felwort which grows on lime-rich soil in Lime, bunch, must, vinous and cellar in Grape). These are only examples of some of the more noticeable instances.
The techniques used in each verse vary in concentration, as allowed to different extents by the possibilities inherent in the names of the fruits, but they remain relatively consistent across the series as a whole, and applications and combinations of the techniques over multiple consecutive words are frequent in some verses. The Apple verse is an outlier in using few of these techniques, and appears to have very little to do with its title syntactically, though it does contain a few semantic associations (e.g. pip in, core).
An initial reading of the Raspberry verse
I had the opportunity to pick raspberries in an English farm orchard this summer, which reason alone prompted me to focus more on the Raspberry verse in this collection which I was already reading at the time. Before this outing, I was more or less at the stage of reading reached so far in this essay, and had the impression that the sequence of poems was concerned with, well, an orchard and the fruit to be found in it. There follows an initial impression of the words in the verse, at this preliminary stage mostly based on semantic associations with the fruit of the title, and syntactic relations and wordplay within the verse itself.
A raspberry’s shape is conic, a synonym of the word conical.
Raspberries are grown on a frame which forms a screen, a construction designed to support and divide the bushy plants. For a raspberry picker, the small bright red fruit can be concealed by the screen of larger green leaves, and easily missed.
The cane is the name given to the stem of the raspberry, which is part of the bramble family collectively known as cane fruits.
The raspberry as a whole is an aggregate fruit, consisting of many small drupelets, each being a small drupe containing one seed.
The pairs alert each and each sweeten are the first words in the verse which comfortably offer to be read plausibly as short grammatical phrases. The pivot word ‘each’ is shared by both pairs, with the same meaning but different possible referents. The word ‘each’ refers to individuals in a group, one by one, rather than a group as a whole. So the first pair, read as an imperative, might be enjoining every individual to be put on alert, in a state of heightened awareness. The second pair could be referring to individual fruits, or even individual drupelets, which each ripen in their own time through a sweetening process in the summer sun. Retrospectively, the word sweeten also links back and modifies the earlier word cane through a secondary association with cane sugar.
Two more possible two-word phrases follow: lain down which has appeared earlier in the sequence as plain down in Melon (12), and will later appear as lain down in Prune (19). We need not assume that each occurrence is intended to have a similar meaning, or even that they are intended in any of the cases to be read as a word pair, in fact we might do better to assume the contrary, but such repetitions do have the effect of binding together the sequence as a whole. As far as its use in this verse is concerned, the raspberry bush does not lay down on the ground. Its fruit-bearing canes are largely self supporting, and the frame it is usually grown on merely assists their more orderly growth. However, the picker can often find more fruit by kneeling or lying down. As one online source advises: ‘Some of the biggest berries are often half hidden by the leaves and you won’t see them unless you look from below, through the bush, to the sky.’
A hasp is a kind of latch or catch which joins objects while allowing for their separation when needed. The word hasp here separates the common two-word phrase shut […] out, meaning to prevent from entering.
*hraspon, a reconstructed Frankish word for tearing, is suggested to be an etymon of the English rasp, which in turn may have given its name associated with course grating to the prickly raspberry, or ‘rough berry’ as alluded to later in this same verse. Hararasp is a type of raspberry. Both could be elided to the word hasp.
The raspberry cane or stem sometimes has a prickle, to protect the plant and its fruits from hungry animals.
Hasp contains as a final cluster the first of two occurrences in the verse of the /-asp-/ compound embedded in the ‘raspberry’ of the title, the other being asperse, and there are two examples of a sp- onset in spore and spill. Colin Williams[2] tells us the Proto Indo-European root *sper gives us spore, spurt and spray, *spreg gives us sprinkle and spatter, and by etymological association asperge (sprinkle) and asperse (slander), and *spel gives the Old English spillen, to destroy or kill, and in turn the spilling of fluid, originally blood, all roots which are thematically related to the copious outflow of red liquid which will stain the fingers of the raspberry fruit picker. The final /-sp/ in hasp appears unrelated to this theme, in fact quite the opposite since it is a hard plosive stop, but in combination with the following word ‘out’ does give us the related ‘-sp out’ derived also from *sper.
Reading to as a particle marks race as the infinitive of a verb, with meanings related to rushing forward to some such purpose as, meaning ‘to such an extent that’, the truth is being found — the Latin root ver of the next word very, and also of ever and verity in the next few lines.
The phrase ‘race as very’ shares its first two and final two letters with the title of the verse, Raspberry, loosely making a rhyme.
A punnet is a receptacle we might use to gather raspberries, or measure them once picked. The word may also be punning on the homophonic phrase ‘pun it’. Formally, the etymology of the word punnet is uncertain, but a punnet in common English usage is a unit of quantity of berries such as raspberries or strawberries, equating roughly to a pound of weight. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the etymons of the word as ‘pound’ and ‘pun’.
The raspberry flower produces nectar and attracts bees (been is the plural of bee in Middle and Old English, persisting in dialectal UK English), which cross-fertilise the flowers by graciously taking (from the Proto Indo-European root *dek- which gives us deign) from one plant to another the pollen derived from the male spore which forms part of the life cycle of land plants, prior to the formation of the gamete. The flower may offer its gifts invitingly, for its own purposes, but the bee must deign to take them, and in the act to fulfil the flower’s purpose.
The innermost whorl of the raspberry’s white to pink flower has 60–80 ovaries, each of which develops into a drupelet. The term ‘fruit’ is generally used for the fertilised and ripened ovary which develops from the flower, while the other main floral parts die, including the male stamens. This is the distant analogy which gives us the plural satis here, the singular sati originally meaning a ‘good and faithful wife’ who has sacrificed herself on the husband’s pyre. In the case of the raspberry, the male parts of the flower die, and the indehiscent fruit formed from the ovary relies on its own decomposition to release and nourish its seeds.
The comparative form of the adjective deep, deeper, indicates something beneath the usual surface, perhaps referring to the possible metaphorical or etymological interpretations of some of the surrounding words which make a plausible reading of the poem possible.
Raspberries grown on tee-shaped trellis support systems in hedgerows are easier to harvest and prune. A tee junction is also a term used to describe branching of a route, often in opposite directions perpendicular to the original direction of travel. A tee-wit is a name given to the lapwing.
The fabric called dimity has the characteristic feature of having at least two warp threads in visible relief in the weaving of the otherwise usually plain cloth.
Verity is the fundamental truth.
To stain is to tinge with a colour different from the natural one, as a word’s meaning can be tinged by its use in different contexts. A word in a typical verse of poetry will always abut other words, ‘abut’ here being an intransitive verb meaning ‘to be adjacent to or in contact with’, and have their meaning coloured by them. Abut is also listed in Wiktionary[3] as an alternative form of the Scots dialect abit, meaning ‘ah, but’ — as if coming to an initial realisation, but seeing another possibility.
Using the simple past form of the verb ‘to mean’, meant, prevents it from being misread in this context in certain adjectival and nominal forms. The author is more typically at pains to allow multiple possible interpretations, so we might take note of the apparently narrower interpretative freedom offered to us in this case. At least, so it may seem for now.
A bowl is a receptacle we might use to eat our strawberries, which might spill out if overturned.
Lucid is an adjective describing what can be clearly understood through rational means, and to ramify is to divide into branches, or multiple categories, potentially to aid understanding.
The word wherry recalls the Proto Indo-European *weh₁ros construction underlying earlier words in this verse derived from the Latin ver, associated with truth. It is also a light sailing barge historically used to transport people and goods particularly on the rivers Thames (of Anthony Stafford’s London) and Cam (of Randolph and Prynne’s Cambridge, where it preceded the more recent punt in popularity as a leisure craft).
The final phrase ‘at bay’ isn’t quite an auto-antonym, but its two common meanings — to be cornered to the point of being caught, and to keep something at a distance — do offer a contrast, and in the context of a wherry (or the truth) may imply that it is to be kept ready nearby, but not actually taken just yet.
Some additional surface features are also noticeable: deeper tee — dimity — verity, very — ever — verity — wherry, cane — lain — deign — stain, and the combination of satis with the nearby ramify to form satisfy.
The last syllable of verity makes ‘tys’ with the first letter of stain, echoing the ‘tis’ in satis a line earlier. On which, more later.
The reading we have so far is necessarily only partial, since it doesn’t take any account of the wider sequence, or any external sources. Even at this cursory level, just as each small drupe of the raspberry contains its seed of meaning, we start to sense the verse and potentially the whole sequence as an aggregate of meanings. We don’t single out each drupelet on a raspberry for enjoyment, but aim to burst the whole fruit against our palate, and it is the sum total of the verse and the sequence that we will hopefully appreciate ultimately, made up of each of its parts individually. Words are being joined and separated, fastened and unfastened, chained and unchained. But at this stage what is being screened or shut out, secured by the hasp which needs to be released to allow entry, if not the reader seeking a way in to a deeper understanding of the verse and the wider poem? Some inkling of what is meant as the truth may be glimpsed, possibly and even probably wrongly, but it is to be kept at bay, and not raced after. Of course, of all the possibilities, no meaning should escape our palates, as the epigraph promises, from the damson to the grape. And language, like nature, continues to offer gifts from its bounty for us to taste. We will see that there are still many more pleasures for us to enjoy here. And so we shall continue.
Internal binding across the sequence
Some words in the Raspberry verse reappear in other Orchard verses: drupe (in verse 23), alert (in 4), lain down (19), out (9 and 21), to (throughout the sequence), as (2 (twice), 4), stain (16), meant (21), at (2, 11, 13, 25).
Letter patterns repeat too, for example /ric/ appears in prickle here, and again several times in the wider sequence: afric, pricket (4), rick (5, 17 and 24), price, tricotage, rickrack, rice (10, Apricot, the title also containing the three-letter pattern, leading to a concentration of such words), citric (17), rich (18). The letter pattern rick occurs six times, including as the beginning of rickrack, embedded in prickle and pricket, and three times just as rick. Words ending in -ic are a related recurring feature, sometimes derived from the letters of the title of the poem: antic (8. Currant), goidelic (9. Goose-gog), melic (12. Melon), eristic (18. Mulberry), runic (19. Prune), ecstatic (23. Nectarine), melic (24. Lime), apical (25. Grapes) However, just as often, words of this pattern are unrelated to the title: afric (4. Bramble), asdic (7. Plum), arabic, gnostic (10. Apricot), scenic (13. Greengage), acerbic (14. Morello), citric (17. Lemon), ascorbic (24. Lime). Noticeable within this group is a subset with initial letter a: acerbic, afric, antic, arabic, ascorbic, asdic. Missing from this subset is the word attic, as in the Attic warbler, or nightingale, which we shall have reason to mention later.
The pattern of letters /asp/ occurs four times in the wider poem, five including the title of the Raspberry verse, which includes hasp and asperse. The pattern appears as gasping in the alliterative Goose-Gog verse, and finally in the last poem, we again come across this snake hidden in the grass in aspen, which may be read as an adjectival formation of the noun ‘asp’.
There are several chains of semantic associations. One is concerned with beekeeping: bee (1), swarm (6), melic (12), been (15), honey (17), honied (23), melic (24), apical (25) swarm (25). Clearly bee activity is important in an orchard: without it there would be no flower fertilisation, and no fruit. Below, we will explore the words melic and apical further.
Unsurprisingly for a sequence on different fruits, both sweetness and sourness, as well as the sense of smell, have their own chains of associations:
⁃ Sweetness, in addition to the specific beekeeping and honey references: sweet (10), sweetest (13), sugar (14), sweeten(15), syrup (19), sweet (20)
⁃ Sourness: tart (8), sourest, bitter, acerbic (14), zestful, citric (17), tart, ascorbic (24)
⁃ Sense of smell: scent (2), fragrant (5), fragrant (21), attar (23)
Other associative chains can also be found:
⁃ Weaving, fabrics, dying and needlework: damask, hue (1), unravel, dye, fuller (3), thimble (4), fringe, plait (5), threads (9), tricotage, rickrack (10), run (12), dimity, stain (15), stain, trim (16), silken, colourant (18), run, fast(19)
⁃ Doorlocks and bolts: sneck (9), latch (11), hasp (15)
⁃ Legal: crime (1), law (2), edict (3), felon, arraignment (12), abet (16), quittance (17), leasehold (19), cell (20), punish (21)
⁃ Grasses: stalk (2), rick, reed, sedge (5), cane (15), rick (17), grass (24), rick (24), mow (25)
Some word and verse pairings are not as expected: bowl is in Raspberry (15) not Cherry (3) (the ‘bowl of cherries’ cliché is the standard pairing); cream is in Cherry (3) not Strawberry (16) (the stock phrase being ‘strawberries and cream’); tart features in Currant (6) and Lime (24), not in Apple, Plum, Strawberry or Lemon, for example, which would be more common pairings for the word. But Prynne often scatters phrases across verses, which acts as a cohering strategy in the same way as other semantic chains. For example: mason (1) has to wait until Green-gage to find its jar (13), hue (1) for its echo and cry in Cherry (3), and the cold and frosty (18) nursery rhyme quotation has to wait for its morning in Medlar (22).
External sources binding the sequence
1. Theocritus
Randolph’s invitation poem to Master Anthony Stafford, which Prynne has excerpted as an epigraph to Orchard, is included in a seminal 1925 paper by R.S. Forsythe[4] as a prominent example of a poem modelled on the popular poem by Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd.
Forsythe traces Marlowe’s own source ultimately to Theocritus’ Idyll XI which tells of the cyclops Polyphemus and his sincere but clumsy courtship of the nymph Galatea, including a poetic invitation with promises. A book-length comparative study of the influence of Theocritus on English literature by Robert Thomas Kerlin[5] cites Edmund Spenser’s Shepheard’s Calendar (1579)[6] as being the first substantial imitation in English poetry of Theocritus, and in particular its January episode as resembling Idyll XI with its entreaties and offered gifts. The first translation of any of the Idylls in their entirety is stated to be Sixe Idyllia (1588)[7], anonymously dedicated to Sir Edward Dyer, with one of the six translated being the Eleventh Idyll, which was followed by another translation of the same by Mr. Duke, collected by Dryden alongside translations of other Idylls (1685)[8], and followed in turn by Creech (1713)[9]. Kerlin comprehensively lists allusions, imitations, paraphrases, translations, and contemporary estimates of Theocritus, excerpting from many of them, and particularly commends versions by Francis Fawkes (1767)[10], and Richard Polwhele (1786)[11]. Forsythe also singles out a poetic translation of the cyclops’ song to Galatea by Maurice Francis Egan (1892)[12]. Theocritus has also been translated into prose English for Loeb by J.M. Edmonds (1912)[13], and most recently by Hopkinson (2015)[14].
Without exhaustively listing all words to be found in common between the text of Orchard and these sources, the following selections will serve the purpose of showing the provenance of some of the words in Prynne’s text.
January, in the Shepheard’s Calendar, gives us many words such as frame, lost, buds (for rosebud), rain, dry, rough, fast, fair, love, foolish (for fool), deigns (for deign), downe (for down), welked (for welk), pensife (for pensive), and weep. We also find the actual word welk in November (‘But nowe sadde winter welked hath the day’), which was presumably rare enough at the time to warrant a gloss in the footnotes: ‘Welked, shortned, or empayred. As the moone being in the waine is sayde of Lidgate to welk.’
The Dyer translation of Theocritus (allowing for archaic spelling and a few tentative semantic substitutions) gives us race, verie (very), lived (for live), first, roses (for rosebud), curled, fold, singing, fast, darted (for dart), sitting (for sit), rhymes (for rhyme, rhyming), faire (for fair), cheese, sharp, mine, run, plain, when, all, way, day, set, well, strong, along, autumn, ever, laden, sweet, great, nie (for nigh), night, baies (for bay), black, waves (for wave), seem, rough, endure, trim, hand, other, once, bie (for by), tis (part of satis) deepe (deeper), come forth (for upforth), forget (for forgotten), home, for, good, away, flown, down, tree, deal, goe (for go), follow, another, play, saie (for say).
Already we can see that these two threads intersect in words such as rough, fast, fair, and down, expressions which are sometimes imitated in later translations, with the addition of words such as soften, drooping (for drupe), hot, rising, spread, cluster’d (for cluster), infused (for infuse) in Duke, sedge, live, and cluster in Creech, and a reed in Polwhele. Egan’s rendition ventures some additions such as swan-nymph, hyacinths (for larkspur), tangled (for tangle), grots (for grot), honeyed (for honied), plaits (for plait), and purple, while the Edmonds prose translation introduces rosebud and ‘rennet tart the curds to part’ into the lexicon shared with the Orchard sequence.
The story of Polyphemus has been recast and retold by classical poets such as Virgil in his Second Eclogue, translated and adapted into English for example by John Dryden[15] and Alexander Pope[16], and such as Ovid, in Metamorphosis XIII, who in turn has been translated into English notably by Arthur Golding[17], John Dryden[18] and George Sandys[19]. A common thread through all the versions is the invitation being extended, with promised benefits, but these translations add little of interest to the above in terms of shared vocabulary.
The occasional semantic substitutions are in line with Prynne’s own method, since it should be noted that Orchard appears to quote from not one but all the sources above, and adds Prynne’s own drily witty modern take on the story. This synoptic paraphrase shows itself for example in Pear, where scent appearing nearby could be Galatea gathering fragrant flowers when Polyphemus first spies her, doorway lure is his invitation for her to come his house, his hermitage secure refers to his solitary lifestyle, living in relative isolation, tending his sheep in a cave, passion true clear is an expression of his love, the reference to a fair in-law is part of the Cyclops’ reasoning in his proposal to Galatea (in Dryden’s Ovid: ‘Add, that my Father sways your Seas, and I,/ Like you, am of the watry Family./ I make you his, in making you my own’). Dryden uses the verb stalk to describe the Cyclops striding ‘with stalking Pace’ in his jealous frustration. However, the word in modern colloquial usage aptly describes the wider behavioural pattern of Polyphemus. It seems comically anachronistic to suggest that Polyphemus stalked Galatea, since it is a modern concept, but the behaviour he exhibited — obsessive pursuit, unwanted attention, and invasion of privacy — would comfortably meet the definition. The preceding word welk in the Pear verse has several different possible meanings, mostly obscure or in dialect, including to shorten, which is the definition given in the gloss to Spenser’s Shepheard’s Calendar, and the only meaning not considered obsolete or dialect. This being the case, if we instead read the word stalk to mean a plant stalk or reed, welk stalk could refer to Polyphemus trimming some reeds to make a pan pipe, as he is reported to have done. Elsewhere in the sequence, Galatea is gathering violet and hyacinth (larkspur) which have a purple flower cluster (the distinctive characteristic which gives them their name in Persian). In Lime, Polyphemus’ hair becomes a ‘rick curled by rhyme’ in allusion to the ‘curled hair’ in the Dyer translation. And elsewhere, in Quince, is Prynne suggesting Polyphemus is an incel (in cell)?
2. Horace
Forsythe draws our attention to another significant invitation poem, Horace’s Ode IV.12, a supper invitation to Virgil (verge, Vergil being an alternative spelling in English), which introduces additional new motifs, for example in Creech’s translation (1715)[20]: spread, swallow, reed, oyntment (for cream), cask (for casket), share. That the poet Virgil had died by the time Horace’s Ode was published has been the subject of scholarly debate, but raises the possibility that Horace was inviting his friend the departed poet from beyond the grave, and soberly reflecting that poetry confers immortality, in line with the general tone of Horace’s later odes which develop and temper the carpe diem theme of earlier books against the permanence of artistic achievement.
Horace introduces the gruesome story of violence, revenge, and transformation of Tereus, Procne and Philomela from Book VI of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In Golding’s translation of Ovid, we find Tereus burning like a ‘stack of hay’ (rick) on first seeing Philomela, the fathrinlaw (in law) of Tereus allowing Philomela to go with him, as well as already familiar motifs such as frame, will, race, down, rain, sharp, purple, fast, deale (for deal), bowels (for bowl), and additions such as credit, pricke (for pricket, or prickle), travel, downeward (for downward), graunge (for the grange where Philomela was raped and imprisoned by Tereus), shaken (for shake), blood, tongue (clipped by Tereus to silence Philomela), and within (from Procne’s climactic revelation that Tereus has eaten his son: ‘the thing thou askest for, thou hast within’). Croxall’s translation, published by Garth (1794)[21], adds rifled (in the sense of raped, for rifle), and tells how Procne ‘with shame dejected, hung her drooping head’ (for drupe).
Of the three birds in the story, only the swallow is mentioned directly in Prynne’s text. The other two are mentioned indirectly. Sappho calls the nightingale, in Ben Jonson’s paraphrase, ‘the dear good angel of the spring’ according to Paul Shorey’s notes[22] on Horace, and the lapwing of Golding’s translation is also known as a tee-wit. A paraphrase of the episode appears in Lemon, where we find phrases such as honey swallow, inflict tongue clip, and leman (illicit lover), and elsewhere we find directly related words such as apical (the tip of the tongue mentioned for example in Golding: ‘The tip fell downe, and quivering on the ground’), and other possible associations such as conic (the shape of the tongue’s severed tip).
In the context of this poem, apical also puns on the word’s potential to be associated with beekeeping, by forming an adjective from the Latin apis (bee) with the English -ical formation. The association of honey (μέλι) and poetry and song (μέλος) is traditional, dating back at least to Hesiod, and is a commonplace through Pindar, Bacchylides, Plato, and Callimachus[23], to Wordsworth (whose starving shepherd poet Comatas in The Prelude, Book XI, is fed honey by bees ‘Because the goatherd, blessed man! had lips/ Wet with the Muses’ nectar’) and beyond. Philomela can be playfully read as a ‘lover of honey’ and ‘lover of fruit’ and anything sweet, or a ‘lover of poetry and song’, as in Milton describing the nightingale in Il Penseroso (‘Less Philomel will daign a Song,/ In her sweetest, saddest plight’, with daign for deign).
3. Other pastoral and invitation poems
Many sources mentioned by Forsythe add relatively little of interest to Orchard’s lexicon, but in the following examples there is more resonance.
⁃ The Lady of May by Philip Sidney[24] includes Iove (for love), foolish, fair, merry, love, rail, beene (for been), will, sweet, silk (for silken), down, bones (for bone), cheese, bowels (for bowl), satis (‘the superancy of their merits de singing satis’ — that is, whether one of two suitors faring better in a poetry competition is enough (satis) to decide between them, as explained by the schoolmaster Rombus in a comically pretentious blend of Latinism and malapropism), deepely (for deeper), up, cleerest eyes (for clear-eyed)
⁃ Phillis and Flora, attributed to Walter Mapes[25], includes tress, whisper, repineth (for repine), fayre (for fair), honey, gifts (for gifted), riches (for rich), black, mine, farre (for far), jarre (for jar), purple, princes (for prince), beene (for been), swans (for swan), dye, scarlet, angel, bee, alight, two-shapt (for double shape)
⁃ Robert Greene’s Menaphon[26] includes deined (for deign), fringed (for fringe), merrie (for merry), lemman (for leman)
⁃ Thomas Lodge’s poem In Commendation of a Solitarie Life[27] includes droope (for drupe), clipte (for clip), downe (for down), swarme (for swarm), double, pleit (for plait), tongue, fast, sweete (for sweet), heaven, cares (for care), peepe (for peep), crimson, morn (for morning), bespreads (for spread), way, hermit (for hermitage), bees (for bee), down, bee
⁃ Solima, from William Jones’ Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages[28] doesn’t add much, except rose-buds (for rosebud) and a lark
⁃ A song of the wooing of Queen Catherine, collected by Thomas Evans[29], includes Welsh, princess, princes (for prince), sweet, tongue, beams (for beam), gloves (for glove)
⁃ Ode to Spring by Thomas Gray[30] includes fair, wake (for awaken), purple, throated (for throat), honied, clear, care, trim, sun, race, rough, chill’d (for chill), sweets (for sweet), flown, and also references the nightingale, from Procne and Philomela
Various other significant pastoral poems, which don’t include the same invitation aspect, and are not part of Forsyth’s catalogue of invitation poems, don’t add anything to our lexicon: Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley, To Autumn by John Keats, or Ode: Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth. I also couldn’t find much of relevant interest in Matthew Arnold’s Philomela; Swinburne’s Itylus; nor Pound’s Canto IV, which all reference the Procne story without noticeable intersection with Prynne’s lexicon in Orchard. Also, not many echoes can be identified in Charles Baudelaire’s L’Invitation au Voyage, in English translations by Arthur Symons, Roy Campbell or Richard Wilbur. It’s especially worth pointing these examples out, if only to demonstrate that not every poem in the pastoral tradition, or with other thematic links arising from the sources, has a convincing intersection with the Orchard sequence. I believe it also requires conscious effort not to echo any words from a particular poem, since probability would suggest there should be some noticeable intersection. However, Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale[31] is exceptional for its ache (echoing achene), and hawthorn, if this could partially explain the abrupt inclusion of the tree at the end of the Strawberry verse.
Randolph’s poem itself prefigures some of the above motifs and themes: the fragment tis (’Tis time that l grow wise’), the references to justice (‘puny of the Innes of Court’), all the mentions of fruits of course, we need look no further than ‘The beauties of the Cheap’ for a tart, the hunting of the stag brings to mind Actaeon (in Pound’s telling in Canto IV he becomes a ‘Spotted stag of the wood;/ Gold, gold, a sheaf of hair,/ Thick like a wheat swath’[32] or in other words, like a rick), and Randolph’s mention of piping Phrygian and Doric melodies recalls Polyphemus’ piping.
4. Marlowe and Tamburlaine
Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine[33] is mentioned by Forsythe for its passages containing invitations, of which there are several. It deserves special mention because Prynne references its title directly (timbre, lain), and also because Orchard draws on much beyond those particular passages. Act I Scene ii of Part I contains two invitation passages, made by Tamburlaine to Zenocrate and shortly after with a similar formula to the Persian army captain Theridamas, where in the 1910 version edited by C.F. Tucker Brooke we find loden (for laden), tane (for taken), rapine (eye rhyme for repine), safe, thorow (for through), Affrica (for afric), rich, aid, live, fair, hew (for hue), way (meaning weigh), mine, own, waves (for wave), faire (for fair), mountain foot (for piedmont), ransom’d (for ransom), sun, ‘bound fast in iron chains’, rains (for rain), raigne (homonym of rain), mean, tongues (for tongue). Elsewhere in Tamburlaine Part I, following modern spelling, we find afric, sun, silk, droop in the context of the state of Persia languishing, blood, peep, doors (for door), swarms (for swarm), throats (for throat), wounded soldiers staggering ‘like a quivering aspen leaf’, hot in the interesting sense of becoming newly established, dyes (for dye), shut, auster, folds (for fold), rifle (in the sense of pillage), the phrase ‘for “will” and “shall” best fitteth Tamburlaine’ as he boasts of his terrible destiny, ‘trampling their bowels with our horses’ hoofs’ (for bowl), ‘pillars … fallen in clusters’ (for cluster), bones (for bone), scarlet, many references to blood, black, staining (for stain), purple, frame, Bajazeth’s curse for the earth to ‘swallow both of us at once’, rising, welkin (in the sense of sky, for welk), tongue, silk, bowls (for bowl), Damascus (for damask), fast (in the sense of not eating), ‘foreign powers and rough imperious yokes’, tresses (for tress), sweetness, ferryman (for ferry), Charon (for boatman), swarm, clear. Zabina violently takes her own life after the gory suicide of Bajazeth, her husband, effectively making her a sati, to use a term from another culture. Tamburlaine Part 2 makes a significant contribution also, especially providing, in the person of Olympia, a second example of a widow who seeks death after burning her husband and son, and craves to ‘cast her body in the burning flame/ that feeds upon her son’s and husband’s flesh’, rather than accepting the unwelcome advances of Theridamas. So within the two Tamburlaine plays, we have two satis.
As well as frequent repetition of the bloody and martial words and imagery in the first play, we find mustered (for muster), bay, masts (for mast), tackling (for tackle), glove, a ‘liquid purple veil … sprinkled with the brains of slaughtered men’, ‘how have ye spent your absent time’ (a slant rhyme for absinthe?), lain, angels (for angel), Tamburlaine raging to ‘break the frame of heaven’ at the death of Zenocrate, and for her to ‘come down from heaven and live with me again’ echoing the plea of Marlowe’s own Passionate Shepherd, the ‘drooping and pining’ (for drupe) of Tamburlaine’s mourning camp, a town being burnt to cinders (for cinder), at a bay (for at bay), glove in the sense of it being thrown down as a challenge, ‘Go, go tall stripling’ (for the unusual name used in Orchard for a gooseberry, the Goose-Gog), pensive, and ‘Earth droops’ (for drupe) when Tamburlaine is finally laid low by a sudden and fatal illness. Tamburlaine has achieved much of the destiny he foresaw for himself, but as he inspects a map of the world in the closing scene he observes that he ‘meant to cut a channel’ between the Mediterranean and Red Seas, giving an aspect of failed intention to a word we read earlier in its sense of signifying, bringing attention to Tamburlaine’s ultimate failure to satisfy his appetite for achievement and conquest. Other words first encountered in a benign pastoral context such as fast, aspen, will, shall, cluster, and the scarlet and black colours of Tamburlaine’s camp and army which advertise his implacable wrath on a besieged city which does not accept his invitation to submit and surrender, take on a much darker aspect in the context of their use in this violent and bloody play. We are reading the same words as before, but perceiving a more sinister and menacing side of them in this different context.
Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta[34] also contains an invitation with promises along the lines of The Passionate Shepherd, including the lines ‘The meads, the orchards, and the primrose-lanes,/ Instead of sedge and reed, bear sugar-canes’ in a passage where Ithimore makes promises to Curtezane, concluding with the phrase which conclusively links it to The Passionate Shepherd: ‘ Shalt live with me and be my love’.
5. Other sources
Erik Gray[35] adds the Old Testament’s Song of Songs to the provenance of the invitation poem, and which features a shepherd vying for the hand of a maiden. In the 1560 Geneva Bible translation Prynne has explicitly quoted from elsewhere, Chapter 7 verse 2 gives the following description of the beloved: ‘Thy nauel is as a rounde cup that wanteth not lickour: thy belly is as an heape of wheat compassed about with lilies’, the heap of wheat being, again, a rick. (The similarly historically significant 1582 Douay–Rheims English translation of the verse has a bowl for the round cup.). Gray introduces a motif he calls the lech l’cha motif, from God’s command in Hebrew to Abraham in Genesis, usually translated as ‘come away with me’ but literally meaning ‘begone’ or go to (from Goose-Gog), in which Gray sees the ambiguity of threat and welcome, exile and homecoming, of many invitations, including God’s command to Eve, in Book 4 of Paradise Lost, to desist from admiring her own reflection, to join with Adam, and become ‘mother of human race’.
Douglas Bruster[36] also refers to the veiled violence of the ‘invitation which is not an invitation’, as well as drawing attention to the goidelic gossip Parson Evans’s Welsh rendition of Marlowe’s lyric in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor (3.1.17–29).
Roses and myrtle feature among the promised gifts in Marlowe’s Passionate Shepherd poem, and we see them echoed along with other themes in Ernest Dowson’s Breton Afternoon.[37] Like Polyphemus ‘On a steep hill-side, on a grassy ledge, I have lain hours long and heard/ Only the faint breeze pass in a whisper like a prayer,/ And the river ripple by and the distant call of a bird’ (or bird-cry). He reflects: ‘And what was all the strife about, for the myrtle or the rose,/ And why have I wept for a white girl’s paleness passing ivory!’, like the Cyclops did for milk-white Galatea, until he finds his peace ‘in a land alone, apart’ and his hermitage secure.
6. Zukofsky
In Louis Zukofsky’s last group of poems, 80 Flowers, each of the 80 verses reflects on an individual flower in a similar fashion to Orchard’s organisation around individual fruits, and in a somewhat similar style of writing, at least superficially.[38] Michele J. Leggott’s gloss, Reading Zukofsky’s 80 Flowers[39], made with the benefit of access to Zukofsky’s notes, helps us to identify frequent external literary references, especially to Classical authors and Shakespeare. 80 Flowers was intended as a summation of Zukofsky’s long life work, and was written over many years, becoming his last complete published work. Orchard does not have an equivalent place in Prynne’s oeuvre, and was one of many publications produced in an intensely prolific period which is yet ongoing. Nevertheless, 80 Flowers shares some stylistic characteristics with Orchard which I find noteworthy and deserving mention, especially the initial impression of the text mostly being comprised of an intriguing concatenation of single words, with few phrases or sentences which parse in the usual way, or yield to interpretation easily.
The word ‘rick’ features in Zukofsky’s short poem about the raspberry in 80 Flowers, and seems to be the only direct point of contact with that poem. Leon Lewis asks in a blog post[40]: ‘And is “a rick case” some kind of carrier, or a manner of storage? Or…? The resistance to linguistic confinement is another aspect of Zukofsky’s avid interest in exploring without restriction the limitless nature of language.’ The same might be said for Prynne, where we have found no fewer than four potential sources for the four uses of the word rick in his sequence.
7. Use of external sources
The fruits in the title of each of the verses act like warp threads across which the structural and supplementary weft threads are woven. For example, a word like rough, included in the warp of the Raspberry verse by semantic association with its titular fruit (the ‘rough berry’), is a knot of language which ties together weft threads from the stories of the Cyclops and his self-estimation as ‘rough and savage’ in Dyer’s Theocritus, his ‘rough limbs, all bristled o’re with haire’ in Sandys’ translation of Virgil, Polyphemus’ description of Galatea in Golding’s translation of Ovid as ‘More rough than Breers’, in Dryden’s translation as ‘rough, as these rocks’, Tamburlaine’s ‘rough imperious yoke’, the ‘rough and rent’ fleece in the January section of the Shepheardes Calendar, ‘the hand of rough Mischance’ in Thomas Gray’s Ode to Spring, and so on, all of which are only one word of the longer strands shared between these sources and Prynne’s text, which continue to be carefully woven through the remainder of the verses, each in its place according to the syntactic and semantic logic of the warp thread, and whether the weft is threaded in front or behind each warp, resulting in varying degrees of prominence of individual sources from one verse to the next.
The technique can be extended depending on how much you are willing to speculate, but then that is part of the pleasure of reading the sequence. The same could be done for many words such as swallow (included in Lemon because it rhymes with yellow, and referencing both the mythical gustatory and ornithological senses we have encountered), plumage (in Plum, also referring to the Procne episode), melodrama (in Melon, referencing the drama of Philomela), tell on (in Morello, Procne telling on Tereus), crimson (in Cherry and Strawberry, due to the colour association, and occurring very prominently in Tamburlaine, in association with blood, as well as ‘crimson spots’ of bloodied plumage on the birds in the Philomela and Procne story), and more playfully the particular word achene used to describe the titular fruit in Strawberry (from Polyphemus suffering an ‘ake’ (ache) in Dyer’s Theocritus, and a reference in an Ode of Keats).
The play of associations across the verses can also be likened to bees, flitting from flower to flower, taking and leaving pollen at each blossom, but with the deposited pollen only bearing fruit at the stigma of a matching flower. Flowering plants can recognise compatible genes in the pollen, and incompatible pollen tubes stop growing, so that only compatible pollen will succeed in fertilising the plant. Bees from a given hive tend to visit flowers of only one type during a foraging trip, but over the course of a season the flowers of the whole orchard will be serviced.
We could continue to examine more invitation poems, and we might cross off another few words as being attributable to one or other of them, but what would be the point? We will never account for everything in this way, and along the way we will certainly also account for some words in ways the author didn’t consciously intend, if that should be a concern to the reader. What might be more significant would be to identify a totally different type of text which has informed the selection of some of the words in the sequence, thereby broadening its theme further (not that a subject which has already occupied poets for millennia needs broadening), perhaps articles from The Times on post-Brexit seasonal casual labour shortages in industrial agriculture and berries rotting unpicked on the branch in the fenland orchards, or Big Fruit and fruit trading as a global commodity and its use of pesticides, political payments and plastic packaging, or a paper by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on finding pleasurable flow in the midst of such bone idleness as advertised by Randolph, or Boris Pasternak opining on the Timburlane-like paradox of brutality of action and sweetness of speech in the person of Joseph Stalin. For such as this, we must wait and see.
8. Rereading the Raspberry verse through the external sources
As usual, some words remain more resistant than others to interpretation, even when we have identified some themes and source materials they may resonate with.
For example, we may now imagine that the conic shape and texture of the raspberry is, quite unnervingly, that of the severed tip of a tongue, bringing to mind the violence against Philomela. But what are we to make of the auto-antonym screen, beyond its interestingly contrasting dictionary definitions?
The word cane is to be found in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta in a parody of the invitation poem format, and can be associated with Polyphemus’ pipes, and the grassy landscapes he inhabited.
Drupe has been found to be a homonym with droope from Lodge’s poem, as well as echoing Marlowe’s Tamburlaine(Cosroe: ‘I see the state of Persea droope’), Duke’s description of Polyphemus’ drooping head, and Procne’s head drooping in shame in Croxall’s Ovid. But we have no further remarkable insight on any deeper import of the words alertand each.
Sweeten has joined other words in a semantic chain concerned with sweetness, words which have been applied both to a beloved innocent and a bloody war criminal, as well as linking the thematic strands of poetry and honey (see below, on the word melic).
Lain is part of the name Timburlaine (timbre is also to be found in the wider sequence, but so far not in the external sources), and also to be found in Dowson’s reverie which has echoes of Polyphemus on the hillside. The word down has arisen many times in the external sources, for example Timburlane calling the dead Zenocrate down from heaven, and the tip of Philomela’s tongue falling down in Golding’s telling of the story.
Shut and hasp could refer to Philomela’s imprisonment, or the phrase interrupted by the hasp, shut [..] out, could refer to Gray’s lech l’cha motif, and the command to ‘begone’, which is the negative aspect of the invitation not accepted.
The prickle, other than being found on a raspberry cane, contains the rick which we have found referring to the unkempt hair of Polyphemus and Actaeon.
The word asperse is a very near anagram of Persea, which is Marlowe’s spelling of Persia in Tamburlaine.
The word race is to be found, for example, in descriptions of Timburlaine as ‘neuer sprong of humaine race’, and ‘famous for nothing but for theft and spoile, to race and scatter thy inglorious crue’. Tereus is ‘of mightie Marsis race’ in Golding’s translation of Ovid, and the vengeful sisters become the shame of their race for the bloody revenge they wreak on him, after Philomela has reasoned that ‘all respect to Tereus must debase/ The noble blood of great Pandion’s race’, in Croxall’s Ovid. Dyer has described Polyphemus as being of the ‘race of the Cyclope’. In his Ode to Spring which references the Procne episode, Gray has pessimistically reflected that ‘To Contemplation’s sober eye/ Such is the race of man:/ And they that creep, and they that fly,/ Shall end where they began.’
Very is found in its adjectival form, meaning ‘actual’, in Golding’s translation of Ovid. Procne begs Tereus to fetch her sister, and Philomela begs her father to be permitted to go, ‘When both of them in verie deede should afterward it rew.’ Following Tereus’ violent rape of Philomela, she promises: ‘if thou keepe me still/ As prisoner in these woods, my voyce the verie woods shall fill,/ And make the stones to understand.’ It is similarly used in Timburlaine: ‘almost to the very walles of Rome.’
Just as the nickname ‘squid’ is applied to Ezra Pound in certain circles, since in common rhyming slang a squid is a quid is a Great British Pound sterling, a punnet is also a pound. Ezra Pound writes about the Procne episode, in Cantos IV, and especially uses the speech fragment ‘tis’ which proves to be significant here.
Pope’s short Discourse on Pastoral Poetry (1717)[41], in which he discusses the influence of the ancients on English poetry, contains six instances of the word been, including ‘Among the moderns their success has been greatest who have most endeavoured to make these ancients their pattern’. But frankly, the word is not prominent in the sources examined above, except appearing in Sidney’s Lady of May in an archaic spelling (beene), and we have gained no further insight into its deployment here.
This line of poetry as a whole is as close as we might find to a complete iambic pentameter in Prynne: asperse to race as very punnet been, and as such, it is worth trying to parse as an entire phrase. In the context of Pound, aspersions about racism resonate due to his much-criticised anti-semitic stance, and many of the source texts we are considering here are racially motivated to a certain extent. Polyphemus was from the race of Cyclops. Tereus was a Thracian, an ethnic group considered to be warlike barbarians by the Athenian Greeks. Tamburlaine was a Scythian shepherd from the plains of Central Asia, of different ethnicity from the Western Persians, and a race feared and admired for their horsemanship and warcraft.
Words in the next line have been relatively sparsely supported by external references. The word satis, which we will be considering further, has been found to have reference points in Marlow’s Timburlaine and Sidney’s Lady of May, and the word tee may be a reference to the tee-wit, or lapwing, which can be situated in the context of the Attic tragedy.
The word rough has been shown to occur many times within the different sources, whereas the subsequent words have not, leaving them to be read for now only in the context of other syntactic and semantic chains in the sequence.
We have reread meant as an expression of failed intention, in the context of Timburlaine’s final scene, and several visceral references to bowels in Timburlaine (for example, ‘rip thy bowels and rend out thy heart/ T’appease my wrath’) have been associated here with the word bowl, which, if allowed, adds violent context from that bloodstained play where much gore is spilled through slaughter and cruelty, while remaining ambiguous as it can also more benignly denote the bowl-shaped goblets and dishes at a feast as also found in Timburlaine.
We have also found the word bay (and the phrase at a bay) in Timburlaine, and the shadie baies advertised by Polyphemus to Galatea in the Dyer translation of Theocritus.
To make each of these narrative and semantic threads more lucid, we have tried to ramify them into categories relating to their different sources and stories, so that their subtle pattern may be more visible, as in dimity. While the coverage of such references may seem uneven and tentative across the verse as a whole, the external sources have introduced a level of reading and a darker interpretation which would not have been accessible otherwise, even if only some of the references hold true to the author’s intention.
Some recurring features across the wider corpus of later Prynne texts
The regular form of the verses across the Orchard collection is a recurring feature found in many other works of Prynne. Not always though. Forms within an individual collection can vary very widely, for example in Of Better Scrap (2019), Snooty Tipoffs (2021), or At Raucous Purposeful (2022), and some works collected as poetry in the recent second collected volume[42] of poetry, such as Parkland (2019), Memory Working: Impromptus (2020–2021), and Latency of the Conditional (2022), have all the appearance of being prose, often using long paragraphs which run over several pages, justified left and right on the page. Asserted Flourish Meant in Foremost Wayleave (2023) is a prose poem within a collection of varying formats. On the whole, however, uniformity of form on the printed page can still be said to be a feature of a large part of Prynne’s later sequences of verse.
Prynne uses forms and details of punctuation for deliberate reasons (for example, the mark known as ‘the dog’s bollocks’ in Duets Infer Duty is also used in formal declarations such as the thematically related US constitution, in the form in which it was originally written), but because of the flexibility of his use of language the poet is not bound by fixed schemes of rhyme and metre, which are used only if and when they are required. Here, as elsewhere in the later works, punctuation is used parsimoniously.
Could we cut sections from Orchard and paste them into any other Prynne poem from 2020, for example, adjusting for line length and metre? To answer in the negative, we can note that the syntactic and semantic logic of including certain words in their particular verses of the Orchard sequence is unique, so that even the titles of the poems can’t be swapped around. There are also the particular strands of invitation poetry and semantic chains being woven together which give the Orchard sequence a characteristically connotative lexicon and structural logic. On the other hand, there are echoes of words, prominent because of their idiosyncratic nature, which are repeated across Prynne’s recent work. But while the same distinctive words from a playfully small set may be redeployed in several works, their connotative function in each context, situated against a background of virtuosically varying vocabulary, is likely to be different.
For example, the word swallow occurs many times in Prynne’s late oeuvre, sometimes in the proximity of the word twitter, indicating an ornithological reading, except that twitter also alludes to the social media platform, as in Not Ice Novice (2022). In Scarce Leafage in the Of Better Scrap (2019) collection swallow occurs with the phrases on the wing, a heart, and chew. Chewing is routinely followed by swallowing, and swallow birds commonly twitter, but how many times are the different meanings combined as in the Attic tragedy echoed here? Memory Working: Impromptus XXI (2020–21) has the words swallow and apical in close vicinity, this being the only other occurrence of apical in the 2024 Poems collection. Knack in best, in the Aquatic Hocquets collection (2020), has a swallow in close proximity with singing at night (which the nightingale is famous for in folklore), and bake up your pies. Helium Nightshade in the Alembic Forest collection (2024), has a pi (for pie) and a swallowtail, and Hoopoe Hazel (the hoopoe being the bird Tereus was transformed into), which is the next poem in the collection, features a punnet and a tongue. Rhizome climbing, from the Timepiece in Total collection (2024) also has a nearby swallow on the wing.
But not every swallow makes an Attic allusion, for example when it is used to refer to the shape of a car logo as in See By So — though you can imagine Prynne taking particular note of the swallowtail logo while preparing his piece about Carlos Ghosn and the Nissan-Renault combined automobile company. But recall that the reason the swallowtail and the story of Procne is in the Orchard sequence at all is because it is mentioned in the epigraph from Randolph (though in a part not quoted), and Horace’s related mention of it in a seminal invitation poem. So even if elements of the same Attic story are used elsewhere, the motivations may be very different.
Other specialist lexicons which are mined in many of the later poems for source domain words to be used metaphorically include cricket, geology, ornithology, and botany, again with some of the same individual words being used, but the metaphor varying according to the target context in each case.
All told, it’s a fun fishing expedition to find how a particular word or motif is being used in different contexts, and how such uses may transfer elements of meaning across texts, particularly with a poet whose use of individual words can be so context specific, and at the same time so polysemic.
A typology of Prynne’s wordplay
To demonstrate the range of Prynne’s wordplay, I’m going to introduce a framework for examining how form and meaning can be varied in expression and usage, and show how Prynne uses every one of its nine categories, often in novel and multiple ways, in a poem such as Orchard. The demonstration involves some speculation, even sometimes a suspension of disbelief, about how Prynne might have used a word in a particular context, but it is sufficient for this purpose to accept that the usage in a particular context may at least include certain possible interpretations, among others.
The ‘Loom of Form and Meaning’ as applied to language describes the intricate and interwoven relationship between the form of language and the concepts or ideas (meaning) it conveys in use. (This is unrelated to the weaving metaphor mentioned in the earlier section on external sources.)
‘Form’ refers to the physical aspects of language, such as its sound, spelling, written or spoken style and inflection, as well as etymology, while ‘meaning’ refers to the ideas, concepts, or emotions that these forms express. Just as threads on a loom are woven together to create a fabric, the elements of form and meaning in language are intricately combined to create communication and miscommunication. The framework helps us to examine the complexity and interconnectedness of these linguistic elements and how they work together to produce language.[43]
The binary structure separating form and meaning is not dissimilar to Ferdinand de Saussure’s language model, but he has little to say about features such as homophones, synonyms, rhymes, puns, and diachronous features such as etymology and historical phonology, and many other types of wordplay to be found in Prynne’s poetry. The Loom of Form and Meaning is more suitable to examine such aspects, being more similar to the ‘slope of reality’ model of Saussure’s student Sergey Karcevskij, in which ‘the signifier seeks to have other functions than its proper function; the signified seeks to express itself by other means than by its sign.’[44]
The Loom is a 3x3 matrix, one axis of which represents form, and the other meaning. A form can either be the same, similar, or different from another form, giving three columns, 1, 2, and 3. Meaning can also be the same, similar or different from another meaning, giving three rows, A, B and C. For simplicity, between the sameness and difference on each of the two axes there is only one other category in between, which is similarity. This similarity is context dependent and will vary, so that what is overlooked as unimportant in one context (e.g. the exact pronunciation or spelling of a word may not affect its meaning) may be of crucial importance in another context (e.g. if pronunciation or spelling as a marker of historical, social or geographical origin significantly influences interpretation). The resulting matrix has nine categories. For each, we will supply one or two examples of its use from the very many available throughout this sequence, and in Prynne’s wider oeuvre.
A1 where both form and meaning are the same
⁃ repetition with no change in meaning
⁃ quotations to be taken at face value
What should be one of the easiest categories to demonstrate, that of identity, is actually one of the hardest, for who would be so bold as to say that two words or phrases, which appear to be the same at face value, have the same meaning in both contexts. Just the fact that one comes first, with the other repeated second, or quoted, puts them in an uneven relationship to each other, and modifies their relative standing and meaning.
But there are many instances of repetition of words, which is a device Prynne uses very often to focus attention, to provide overall coherence, and help to bind a sequence of verses into a whole. Some words are repeated across this sequence more than four times: as, at, down, first, for, go, in, not, on, one, or, rick, to, up, will, and yet. Some of these words may appear to be necessary auxiliaries and prepositions, but Prynne’s word selection is not constrained by the usual grammatical requirements, so no word should be overlooked. Some instances may invite similar or different readings of the same word (see B1 and C1 below). For example, to can be read as a particle of an infinitive verb (to race, to meddle, to care) or as a preposition (off to on, go to, alert to her). The title of the Thomas Randolph’s poem which provides the epigraph to Orchard uses both meanings: An Ode to Master Anthony Stafford, to Hasten him into the Country. But all those instances that precede an infinitive verb support being considered at least prima facie as a particle of the verb, a repeated word with no change in meaning and function, and therefore falling into the A1 category.
Fragments of an English nursery rhyme are included in the Mulberry verse, here go round bush and cold and frosty, and are apparently quoted at face value. (Some of the missing words, on, morning, turn up elsewhere in the sequence.) Even if the quoted rhyme may originally have been a joke about the 18th century British silk industry struggling with harsh winters, any such allusion is already in the original, and is transferred with it.
A2 where form is similar and meaning is the same
⁃ spelling and pronunciation differences, for example between UK and American English, Old or Middle English, and misspelling and mispronunciation
⁃ close cognates considered as synonymous in other languages
⁃ speech disorders or affectations such as lisping, or labial-free ventriloquial speech
Quoting peep for peepe in the original quoted text, jar for jarre, far for farre, been for beene, and very many others, are all examples of changes of spelling with no change of meaning. The epigraph from Randolph also has palates in Prynne’s version for pallets in the 1668 version, and damson for damsen.
More speculative and challenging examples of the use of a similar word form with the same meaning can be found in Duets Infer Duty, where the referents are the various trees to be found in the Classical literary grove, for example surf instead of syrfe from the Old English in reference to a rowan tree, or whiten for the whitten tree or dwarf elder. The word whiten, for example, also connects with other strands of meaning in that poem involving the word white, but in its role as referring to the dwarf elder the use of the variant spelling is an A2 type of word play.
(As soon as a change of spelling is intended to lead to a different meaning, such as droope being rendered as drupe in the Orchard sequence, this is a C2 type of word play.)
A3 where the form is different but the meaning is the same
⁃ synonyms, including alternative names such as scientific and various folk names for particular plants, birds, and minerals, with the same referent
⁃ distant cognates in other languages which we consider synonymous but where the form has differed significantly
⁃ antonomasia, where epithets or nicknames are used for the same referent
Chains of synonyms are examples of A3-type word play. For example, in the sense of all being names for a doorlock or bolt, the words sneck, hasp, and latch are practically synonymous, and form a semantic chain in this sequence of verses. Any additional interpretation to be attributed to the nouns with this meaning (e.g. the means of securing Philomela’s cell) can apply equally to them all, though there are sometimes secondary reasons for including each of them in their respective verses (for example, the -asp- motif matches hasp to the Raspberry verse).
The practically synonymous words bitter, acerbic and sourest are all included in the verse on Morello.
Referring to the originator of the Epimenides Paradox as the Cretan in the phrase cretan paradox is an example of antonomasia, where the name is different but the named is the same.
Entertaining examples of antonomasia are particularly noticeable in Not Ice Novice, where certain individuals indispensable to the poem’s argument are referred to, but not explicitly named. There is an entire battery of words used to refer in amusing ways to Elon Musk, drawing on Latin and folk names for various plants and animals (spikenard for muskroot, trefoil for musk raffle, redstart in the Muscicapidae family of birds, badger and wolverine as musk-producing mammals), as well as others for Richard Branson (goatee) and Jeff Bezos (peanut).
The presence in the Strawberry verse of the word fragile calls to mind the synonymous scientific name of the strawberry genus, fragaria.
B1 where the form is the same and the meaning is similar
⁃ the same word with similar meanings
⁃ homonyms such as polysemes extended by metonymy and synecdoche which preserve the word form in a related meaning
⁃ analogy, metaphor, simile, metonymy and synecdoche which make use of the same expression as a source
Exploiting the instability of meaning of individual words is indispensable to Prynne’s poetic practice. Almost every single word on the page can be read in multiple ways, according to the different strands of meaning being woven together in the poem as a whole. It is a B1-type game if the same word has similar meanings, and C1 if the meanings of the word are more divergent.
Meanings of the word to may vary, or remain indeterminate, for example in ripe to shake to fallen, where the first instance of ‘to’ reads as a particle of the following verb, but the second does not read in the same way since the correct verb form is not supplied. ‘To fallen heroes’ would be an example of a grammatical continuation, with ‘to’ as a preposition, but the actual continuation ‘to fallen spread’ makes the parsing of the phrase more problematic. Both uses of the word originate from the same Old English root ‘tō’, reflecting a general sense of direction or goal. Over time, the preposition and the infinitive marker diverged in function but retained the fundamental idea of indicating direction or purpose. Even the adverbial use of the word (‘push the door to’) shares the same etymology. As such, any play on the function of the word ‘to’ can be said to have related and similar meanings, and fall into the category of B1.
Prynne puns in this sequence with the word melic, meaning in the first instance a form of lyric poetry derived from the Greek root melos, and also forming an adjective from the root meli using the English -ic formation, meaning pertaining to honey, and by extension to bees. The connection emphasises the association of melody, poetry, and sweetness, conveying something sweet and pleasing, whether it be in sound (melic poetry) or taste (honey).
Two related uses here of stalk derive from Old English ‘stalcian’, meaning stealthy movement. Dryden’s Polyphemus strode ‘with stalking pace’, describing the physical, predatory movement, while the modern usage of ‘stalking’ extends this to persistent, intrusive attention. The possibility of two similar meanings of stalk arising from same etymological root make these alternative readings of the same word a B1-type pun.
In reading Prynne’s poems, when we are faced with an unusual or specialised word or name from a particular discipline, be it geology, crystallography, ornithology, mineralogy, or botany, which we do very often find, and which together bind the works as a stylistic trait across his wider oeuvre, it is necessary to look for analogies beyond its specialist face-value meaning in order to successfully read it in context. These are examples of B1-type word play.
For example, having accepted an interpretation of the unusual word satis as the only one available in English, that of the self-sacrificing widow, coming up with an analogy to explain its relevance in the context of fruit forming from the ovary which proceeds to nourish the seed through its own demise is a further B1-type step. The same word is used as the source of the analogy, and it serves to illustrate a similar relation in the target domain.
Finely powdered rutile is used to make brilliant white titanium oxide paint, and needles of rutile give sparkling gems their asterism, so the use of the word to describe bright whiteness makes a fitting and novel addition to the already well-worn tropes (snow, milk, cheese, swans) to be found in many of the invitation poems being quoted from here.
Asdic is one of those interesting technically specific words which doesn’t offer many alternatives for an initial interpretation. Asdic is a radar system for locating submarines, an acronym for the Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee. Around this word, in the Plum verse, we have ‘deep aplomb,/ ruff plumage reflect sound formed/ asdic upforth victorious’. We’ve already seen how Polyphemus tries to tempt Galatea upforth from the unplumbed depths, and surely would have liked to make use of asdic technology to stalk her. The nearby reference to the ruff bird’s plumage, and the prominent ruff of feathers on its neck, draws attention to its self-descriptive name, in which the name of a thing is motivated by its characteristics. In a similar way, for example, Galatea is named after her milk-white complexion (Greek: gala = milk, as in the the Milky Way galaxy). Descriptive naming and asdic radar technology are alike in identifying something by reflecting its inherent traits in sound. In this B1-type analogy, descriptive naming uses inherent characteristics to assign a name which can be expressed in sound, while asdic radar uses sound waves to locate objects.
B2 where both form and meaning are similar
⁃ words which are related by etymology or morphology, which can be said to be in the family of similar words with similar meaning
⁃ polyptoton
The words ever — very — verity in the Raspberry verse are linked by etymology, along with wherry, allowing for an additional (A2-type) phonological adaptation from Proto Indo-European *weh₁ros, and taken together they make an example of B2-type wordplay.
Supplementing the four occurrences of the word down with the use of downright and downward, or the two uses of sweet with sweeten and sweetest, five of up with upforth and upshot, and three of will with willing, are examples of B2-type wordplay with morphologically related words.
Reading aspen as the construction of an adjective from the noun asp (i.e. like an asp) is a morphological pun. Wood is wooden, and gold is golden, but there is a possibility that something can seem wooden or golden without actually being so, and similarly may seem to be aspen without being an asp. Surrounding context which leads towards such a reading of the word aspen includes in grass on the facing page, and to mow in the same verse, recalling a snake in the grass, here the ‘invisible worm’ which has hardly been alluded to in the entire sequence except obliquely, for example, in the unsick rosebud (in the Apple verse, of course) recalling The Sick Rose by William Blake.[45] It’s the morphological link from the noun asp to the adjective aspen which makes this a B2 type pun.
Etymological and phonological wordplay are compounded in the use of the word ache to refer to the oak tree in Duets Infer Duty, from the Indo-European stem *-aik, which is B2-type wordplay (combined with phonological adaptation into the modern English ache, which is itself A2-type wordplay if it is still intended to refer to the oak).
B3 where the form is different and the meaning is similar
⁃ analogy, metaphor, simile, metonymy and synecdoche which result in different expressions being used from a target domain
⁃ distant cognates in other languages where secondary associations modify the meaning
Semantic chains are sprinkled throughout Prynne’s poems. They have been included by the poet, and are identifiable by the reader, precisely because together they draw out a particular theme or strand of similar meaning. Where this sometimes results in the deployment of completely different words, not related by etymology or morphology, this is B3-type word play. The different words are not synonyms, but their meaning is related.
For example, to the extent that the words associated with the titular fruits within each verse are recognisably related in meaning, they belong in this category. In Raspberry, meanings relating to the fruit include punnet by metonymy, and drupe, cane, spore by synecdoche. They are different words, but they are not unrelated in meaning. On the contrary, they have been included precisely because they are related.
In some cases, a metaphorical connection is well-established and extends far back to Indo-European culture, such as the association of weaving and poetry reflected in the related word chain in Orchard.[46]
These semantic chains are a recurrent feature in Prynne’s poems, for example in Not Ice Novice there are chains relating to fire, wind, fluids, geology, botany, ornithology and cricket. Cricket is also to be found in See By So, where the game of cricket provides the vocabulary for an extended metaphor for an escape story. In Duets Infer Duty semantic chains relate to architectural features, fabrics and related processes, roofing with stretched fabrics, and different Indo-European metaphors for poetry and its dissemination in groups of words related to travel by sea, land and air, woven in with other semantic chains relating to biological mechanisms of seed dispersal which can also be read metaphorically.
C1 where the form is the same but the meaning is different
⁃ the same words with different meanings, for example those listed under separate main definitions in the OED, not only those which may cause surprise or difficulty, but also less entrenched meanings not everyone would have access to
⁃ true homonyms which share spelling and pronunciation but have a different meaning, including auto-antonyms, whether or not etymology is shared
⁃ satire and irony, especially when understated and implicit
A word like fast has developed almost opposite adjectival meanings from the same etymology. Originally the meaning was to be securely held fast in chains, which developed through adverbial use to being associated with rapidity, for example a fleeing stag not being fast enough to escape the chasing hounds. The word also has another etymologically related but different meaning in the vocabulary of fabrics, which forms a semantic chain in Orchard, where a dye is said to be fast if it does not run.
At bay is a short phrase which can be read in very different and contrasting ways in the same context, as illustrated above.
To allow the possibility of having quoted bee in its original archaic spelling of the verb to be from one of the primary sources, and including it where the most likely interpretation is a buzzing bee, is to change the meaning while preserving the word form. Reading been as the (archaic) plural of bee is a similar example of an unusual but possibly valid interpretation which would take more courage to propose.
In addition to the similar alternative interpretations discussed in B1 above, positioning the word stalk as a material needed to fashion Polyphemus’ pipes is a C1 type ambiguity with a completely different meaning.
C2 where the form is similar but the meaning is different
⁃ rhymes and rhyming puns, as well as other imaginatively similar forms with different or unexpected meanings
⁃ alliteration using words unrelated in meaning
⁃ capitonyms, including where pronunciation and meaning are changed
Punning with C2-type word play is a key mechanism in Prynne’s poetry.
Adding, subtracting or substituting a few letters often gives a totally different meaning, whether in perfect rhyme (e.g. each, peach, preach, pleach) or slant rhyme (e.g. wince once), or eye-rhymes (stain statin) including those made through anagrams and near-anagrams (e.g. lingual angular/ wrangle). Also, all the words derived in different ways from letters contained in the titles of each verse in this sequence are examples of this type of syntactic play.
Alluding to the verb ‘droope’ from Lodge’s poem for example, or Tamburlaine, as the noun drupe in the context of a fruit is to pun with this heterographic homophone.
The phrase welk stalk is a near-homophonic pun on the similar-sounding common phrase whelk stall, usually used in a derogatory sense of ‘not being able to run a whelk stall.’ Is Polyphemus’ suit so hopelessly incompetent? In some tellings of the story, he does finally get his girl.
Elsewhere in the later poems, Prynne redeploys a rhyming scheme from Wordsworth in See By So (gay, day, lay, play, sway, nay in Wordsworth, day, away, say, play, way, stay in Prynne; will, hill, fill in Wordsworth, mill, fill, ill, hill, willing in Prynne), uses all manner of sound and eye rhymes and alliteration in Duets Infer Duty (back [..] buck, chatter in charter, rotor proton, orange foraged, care bear, merge [..] spurge, mown down, averse avarice, abstruse moose loosestrife, sour source, talus tell us tallow we know, elemental enamel avid avian, broad implored, to highlight a small selection), and again in Not Ice Novice makes use of sound rhyme (‘penguin engine’; ‘rivet inert’; ‘make mine anemone’), and internal rhymes (‘leasing [..] creasing’; ‘taxon [..] waxen’; ‘cypher wafer’; ‘indent in want inclined’; ‘oven raven’; ‘most roasted’; ‘dart [..] redstart’), as well as end-rhymes in the quatrains throughout.
C3 where the form and meaning are both different
⁃ carefully expressed juxtaposition of words and thoughts that are unrelated
Startling juxtaposition is a common experience particularly on an initial reading of a Prynne poem — a deliberately tricky reference or cunning pun will present a difficulty, unless and until it’s resolved, which it may never be, even after repeated reading. What will be startling to one reader may be an instantly recognisable reference to another, but every reader will experience some degree of radical disjunction at least initially, unless they have managed to tune in immediately to the poet’s densely interweaving lines of argument, and already have all the relevant references available in memory.
Quite appropriately, notable examples in the current case include the use of gordian in the Melon verse, until I recalled the horrific fate of Bajazeth, Emperor of the Turks, at the hands of Tamburlaine who (in Marlowe) has initially usurped the Persian throne, and learned by serendipity that the Turkish Ghiordes knot in carpet making (as opposed to the other common knot, the Persian) is also known as the Gordian knot, so that the word gordian may serve to contrast the Turk Bajazeth with the Persian Tamburlaine, or the abrupt inclusion of the word hawthorn at the end of the Strawberry verse, if sightings of the word in Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale, for example, seem insufficient reason on their own. At the time of writing, carom is another example — whether in its sense of a spice, or a cannoning ball in billiards — where a suitable target for what is probably a metaphorical use remains elusive for now, but may be obvious to another.
The forbidden fruit of possible meanings
I have been careful to show that words usually have multiple meanings and uses in any single context in Prynne. More common words, and those we might expect to find in a given context, may be potently polysemous or invitingly receptive to analogical or connotative use, but the incentive to look beyond face value, and the result of doing so, is not as convincing as it is for unusual or incongruous words, perhaps giving the inventive poet who wishes to provoke thought and amusement in the reader good reason for using pointedly specialist vocabulary in appropriate measure.
The richness and descriptive power of a word such as ‘satis’ and all it implies in the context of the Raspberry verse, lies in the initial surprising encounter with a startlingly unusual form and uncertain meaning (a C3-type crux until it is resolved), the narrowness of available options for interpretations in standard English (tentatively arriving at the A1 dictionary definition: plural of sati, a self-sacrificing widow), the inapplicability of that initial interpretation in the wider context of a verse nominally about a fruit, and its reapplication as the source of an analogy into another target domain (B1: self sacrifice of the female flower ovary after the death of the male stamen to form a fruit and nourish the seed). That the word is also a direct and unaltered quotation from a thematically related poem where it is used with a completely different meaning (C1: satis, meaning ‘enough’ in Latin, from Sidney’s The Lady of May), as well as visually linking with another word nearby to form another word which is more immediately legible (C2: using the -fy ending of the nearby ‘ramify’ to form ‘satisfy’, which is unrelated to self-sacrificing, but related to the Latin quotation in Sidney in the sense of having had a sufficient quantity), containing within itself as a fragment the plea of the swallow Procne (C1: ‘the swallows crying:/ ’Tis. ’Tis. ‘Ytis!’ from Canto IV, Ezra Pound), and returning full circle to the dictionary definition (A1) in the persons of the sati Zabina who kills herself after her husband Bajazeth’s suicide, and in Olympia who effectively kills herself after being widowed in Marlowe’s two Tamburlaine plays, is entirely typical of the satisfying complexity of the knotwork to be found in closely reading Prynne.
But I get to a certain point in these readings, which could and probably will go on indefinitely, where I have to start trying to tie up the loose ends I’ve left for myself, and leave the rest open for future enjoyment.
Prynne has invited us to enjoy a journey through poetry with him, and especially a certain type of pastoral poetry initially inspired by Theocritus, which has been revisited frequently in English poetry through allusion, imitation, translation and transformation.
At the same time, like the later Horace, the invitation poem rises above hedonistic enjoyment and asserts its own claim as part of Prynne’s poetic legacy, as he consciously places himself in a line of poets who have secured their own legacy before him, including with similar poems which this one will stand among, and those which are still to be written by others.
For our part, in accepting the invitation, and learning from Polyphemus, we could pass our hours very pleasurably in poetry, with delight and ease in the locus amoenus of these intriguing verses, rather than dwelling on sadness or seeking escape through more costly distractions and cures.
But alongside the pleasant invitation, there is also the consideration of what may transpire if we do not accept. What of the violence of the shepherds Polyphemus and Tamburlaine, and the sufferings they inflicted on those who resisted? And what of Tereus, the even more unmitigated tyrant whose invitation to Philomela turned so violently awry? May we simply withdraw from such monstrous aberrations, seeking refuge in aesthetic and sensual realms, or are we to investigate, challenge, interrogate, mock and redress the bullies, tyrants and predators, or come to terms with nature in its widest sense being red in tooth and claw, and morally indifferent? As Joseph H. Gardner said about the latter day pastoral poet and decadent Ernest Dowson: ‘Any worldview that does not take stock of the loathsome and the tawdry as well as the artificially beautiful is bound to founder.’[47]
If we are inclined to accept the one, are we then bound to confront the other?
[1] Randolph, T., Poems with the muses looking-glass, 1668
[2] Williams, C., Sl- is for Sleaze but Sn- is for Sneeze! The Meaning Behind English Consonant Clusters, 2017
[3] Website accessed 17 August 2024
[4] Forsythe, R. S., The Passionate Shepherd; And English Poetry, PMLA, vol. 40, no. 3, 1925
[5] Kerlin, R.T., Theocritus in English literature, 1910
[6] Spenser, E. (ed. Dodge, R.E.N), The complete poetical works of Spenser, 1908
[7] Theocritus (transl. Anon, dedicated to Dyer, E.), Sixe idillia, 1588
[8] Theocritus (transl. Duke, R.), The Cyclop, in Miscellany poems (ed. Dryden, J.), 1685
[9] Theocritus (transl. Creech, T.), The Idylliums of Theocritus (second edition), 1713
[10] Theocritus (transl. Fawkes, F.), The idylliums of Theocritus, 1767
[11] Theocritus (transl. Polwhele, R.), The idyllia, epigrams, and fragments, of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, with the elegies of Tyrtæus, 1786
[12] Egan, M.F., Cyclops to Galatea, in Songs and sonnets, and other poems, 1892
[13] Theocritus, in The Greek Bucolic Poets, (Ed. and transl. Edmonds, J.M.), 1912
[14] Theocritus, in Theocritus, Moschus, Bion (Ed. and transl. Hopkinson, N..), 2015
[15] Virgil (translation. Dryden, J.), Pastoral II, in The works of Virgil: Containing his Pastorals, Georgics, and Æeneis, 1697
[16] Pope, A., Summer, or Alexis, in The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope (ed. Boynton, H.W.), 1903
[17] Ovid (transl. Golding, A.), Metamorphosis XIII, in Shakespeare’s Ovid: being Arthur Golding’s translation of the Metamorphoses (ed. Rouse, W.H.D.), 1904
[18] Ovid (transl. Dryden), The Story of Acis, Polyphemus, and Galatea, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in fifteen Books, 1727
[19] Ovid (transl. Sandys, G.), Ouid’s Metamorphosis, 1632
[20] Horace (transl. Creech, T.), Ode XII Liber IV, in The odes, satires, and epistles of Horace, 1715
[21] Ovid (transl. Croxall, S.), The story of Tereus, Procne and Philomela, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: translated by eminent persons, 1794
[22] Horace (transl. Shorey, P.), Odes and epodes, 1911
[23] Crane, G., Bees without Honey, and Callimachean Taste, The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 108, №2, 1987
[24] Sidney, P., The Lady of May, in The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, 1605, accessed August 2024 by e-text at https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/9016b9dc-b1e2-47be-bc6c-b3b4ef08407f/content
[25] Mapes, W., (attr.), The amorous Contention of Phillis and Flora, in The Latin poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes (ed. Wright, T.), 1841
[26] Greene, R., Menaphon, in The life and complete works in prose and verse of Robert Greene, 1964
[27] Lodge, T., In commendation of a solitarie life, in Glaucus and Silla, with other lyrical and pastoral poems (ed. S.W. Singer, S.W.), 1819
[28] Jones, W., Solima, in Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages, 1772
[29] Evans, T., A song of the wooing of Queen Catherine, in Old ballads, historical and narrative, with some of modern date, collected from rare copies and MSS, 1810
[30] Gray, T., Ode, in A collection of poems by several hands (ed. Dodsley, R.), 1782
[31] Keats, J., Ode to the nightingale, in Annals of the fine arts, 1816
[32] Pound, E., The Cantos of Ezra Pound, 1970
[33] Marlowe, C., The Conquests of Timburlaine the Scythian Shepheard, in The Works of Christopher Marlowe (ed. Tucker Brooke), 1925
[34] Marlowe, C., The Jew of Malta, ibid.
[35] Grey, E., Come Be My Love: The Song of Songs, ‘Paradise Lost’, and the Tradition of the Invitation Poem, PMLA, Vol. 128, №2, 2013
[36] Bruster, D., ‘Come to the Tent Again’: ‘The Passionate Shepherd,’ Dramatic Rape and Lyric Time, Criticism, Vol. 33, №1, 1991
[37] Dowson, E., Breton Afternoon, in The poems of Ernest Dowson, 1905
[38] Zukofsky, L., Complete Short Poetry, 1991
[39] Leggott, M.J., Reading Zukofsky’s 80 Flowers, 1989
[40] Lewis, L., Aural Invention as Floral Splendor: Louis Zukofsky’s Vision of Natural Beauty in 80 Flowers, Association of Writers and Writing Programs, February 2008, accessed 17 August 2024
[41] Pope, A., The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, 1717
[42] Prynne, J.H., Poems 2016–2024, 2024
[43] For a linguistic application of the Loom of Form and Meaning which aptly examines the word ‘fruit’, see ‘JustKnecht’, The Fruit of the Loom, Medium, 2021: online at https://medium.com/@justknecht/the-fruit-of-the-loom-8c8702cd44fe.
[44] quoted in Steiner, Peter and Wendy, Post Script: The Relational Axes of Poetic Language, in Mukarovsky, J., (transl. and ed. Burbank, J., Steiner, P.), On Poetic Language, 1976
[45] Blake, W., Complete Writings, 1966
[46] West, M.L., Indo-European Poetry and Myth, 2007
[47] Gardner, J.H., Dowson’s Pastoral, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 46, №3, 1991
