J. H. Prynne is Britain’s leading late-modernist poet. His work, as it has emerged since the 1960s, when he was close to Charles Olson and Edward Dorn, is marked by a remarkable combination of lyricism and abstraction, at once austere and playful. The White Stones is a book that is central to Prynne’s career and poetics, and it constitutes an ideal introduction to the achievement and vision of a legendary but in America still little-known contemporary master. “[Prynne’s poetry] can induce the same combinations of fear and wonder once associated with the sublime...It is undeniable that his poetry offers both pleasures and challenges of an unusually complex kind: and it is for precisely this reason that many people will testify, without hyperbole or sentimentality, that his poetry has changed their lives.”—Robert Potts, The Guardian
 
“Prynne’s work is challenging, yes, but also funny...politically incisive, erotic, and philosophical. It puts into play the most diverse range of discourses imaginable and doesn’t make it easy for the reader to decide how or even with what attitude to respond...Prynne’s work reminds us that poetry, besides offering a variety of sensorial and emotional pleasures, can be something with which to think.”—Forrest Gander, Chicago Review