This volume is a new annotated edition of J.H. Prynne's 1983 poem The
Oval Window, making use of photographs taken by the poet at the time and
place of composition, together with a substantial portfolio supplied by
him of source and reference material. This source material includes
political and economic news published during the period in early autumn
1983 when the poem was written, together with extracts from literature,
Eastern and Western philosophy, optics, anatomy, computer programming
language, and a considerable quantity of ancient Chinese poetry. The
edition has two commentary essays: the first primarily concerned with
approaches to reading, including the use of search engines, and with the
relations between different elements in the work, and the second with
the topography and the critical antecedents of the poem. For ease of
reading, a clean reading text is included as well as the annotated text.
The expanded third edition of Prynne's Poems (2015) was published by
Bloodaxe in 2015.