The Saturday Poem - Geoffery Hill
The Saturday poem is back from holiday in Berlin, and I thought that on shelf two we were about to move from one late 20th century scholarly poet in Ursula Fanthorpe to another - Elizabeth Jennings. But I had forgotten that in between stands a volume of the ultra scholarly Geoffery Hill- who is a very distinuished poet indeed
by all the traditional indicators - First class degree, academic career,Fellow of the Royal Society of literature, Oxford Professor of Poetry ( from 2010- when they introduced email voting which took all the fun out of queuing up to vote and then meeting old friends for lots of post voting drinks in the Kings Arms).
So, together with his appearance which is positively Tennyson -like :
he occupies a sort of arch-poet status for some - and by contrast, as you might instantly imagine is thought by others to be 'difficult' - which being translated means prententious at least.
Its certainly true that he is a poet's poet I think - full of references to other poets and to classical themes and other features that mark out someone who had poetry running in his veins from birth. But he does have a point to make that simplicity is often just a slogan for politicians and that difficulty which means one has to make an effort has its rewards. I constantly change my mind about him and sometimes shake my head - but then when he can write like this - in Broken Eternities a poem from his 2007 volume I have to concede greatness - with reservations- which would be true of much greatness anyway.
This poem contains two lines at least I would give much to have written and one word which I absolutely loathe- we will leave it to readers to form a view.
Broken hierarchies
When to depict rain-heavy rain-it stands
in dense verticals diagonally lashed,
chalk- white yet with the chalk translucent;
the roadway sprouts a thousand flowerets,
storm- paddled instantly reaped,replenished,
and again cut down.
The holding burden of a wisteria
drape amid drape, the sodden
copia of all things flashing and drying:
first here after the storm these butterflies
fixed on each jinking run,
probing, priming, then leaping back
a babble of silent tongues:
and the flint church also choiring into dazzle.
…
like Appalachian music, those
aureate stark sounds
plucked or bowed, a wild patience
replete with loss,
the twanked dulcimer
scrawny rich fiddle gnawing;
a man’s low voice that looms out of the drone:
the humming bird that is not
of these climes; and the great
wanderers, like the albatross;
the ocean, ranging- in, laying itself
down on an alien shore.
by all the traditional indicators - First class degree, academic career,Fellow of the Royal Society of literature, Oxford Professor of Poetry ( from 2010- when they introduced email voting which took all the fun out of queuing up to vote and then meeting old friends for lots of post voting drinks in the Kings Arms).
So, together with his appearance which is positively Tennyson -like :
he occupies a sort of arch-poet status for some - and by contrast, as you might instantly imagine is thought by others to be 'difficult' - which being translated means prententious at least.
Its certainly true that he is a poet's poet I think - full of references to other poets and to classical themes and other features that mark out someone who had poetry running in his veins from birth. But he does have a point to make that simplicity is often just a slogan for politicians and that difficulty which means one has to make an effort has its rewards. I constantly change my mind about him and sometimes shake my head - but then when he can write like this - in Broken Eternities a poem from his 2007 volume I have to concede greatness - with reservations- which would be true of much greatness anyway.
This poem contains two lines at least I would give much to have written and one word which I absolutely loathe- we will leave it to readers to form a view.
Broken hierarchies
When to depict rain-heavy rain-it stands
in dense verticals diagonally lashed,
chalk- white yet with the chalk translucent;
the roadway sprouts a thousand flowerets,
storm- paddled instantly reaped,replenished,
and again cut down.
The holding burden of a wisteria
drape amid drape, the sodden
copia of all things flashing and drying:
first here after the storm these butterflies
fixed on each jinking run,
probing, priming, then leaping back
a babble of silent tongues:
and the flint church also choiring into dazzle.
…
like Appalachian music, those
aureate stark sounds
plucked or bowed, a wild patience
replete with loss,
the twanked dulcimer
scrawny rich fiddle gnawing;
a man’s low voice that looms out of the drone:
the humming bird that is not
of these climes; and the great
wanderers, like the albatross;
the ocean, ranging- in, laying itself
down on an alien shore.