Geoffrey Hill > Quotes

“If we meet each other in hell, it's not hell.”
― Geoffrey Hill, Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952-2012

“Finally coming to terms with Fathers Day. I blow as a Dad. I get it. No, I'm not an evil, abusive Father, it's just that while all my intentions and thoughts have been out of love for my kids, my actions and behaviour never measured up.”
― Geoffrey Hill

“Evil is not good's absence but gravity's
everlasting bedrock and its fatal chains
inert, violent, the suffrage of our days.”
― Geoffrey Hill, Canaan: Poetry of Moral Urgency and Historical Witness―Suffering, Martyrdom, and the Millennium

“Not as we are but as we must appear,
contractual ghosts of pity; not as we
desire life, but as they would have us live,
set apart in timeless colloquy.
So it is required; so we bear witness,
despite ourselves, to what is beyond us,
each distant sphere of harmony forever
poised, unanswerable. It is without
consequence when we vaunt and suffer,
or if it is not, all echoes are the same
in such eternity. Then tell me, love,
how that should comfort us-or anyone
dragged half-unnerved out of this worldly place
crying to the end ”I have not finished.”

From 'Funeral Music”
― Geoffrey Hill, Collected Poems

“Snooki is a bestselling author? Huh? What? I don't know if I should dumb down my book, shoot myself or find a publisher who'll settle for a rough draft written on a Pop-Tart and a coconut lotion handie..”
― Geoffrey Hill

“It is not faithless
to stand without faith, keeping open
vigil at the site”
― Geoffrey Hill

“In my view, difficult poetry is the most democratic, because you are doing your audience the honour of supposing that they are intelligent human beings. So much of the populist poetry of today treats people as if they were fools. And that particular aspect, and the aspect of the forgetting of a tradition, go together.”
― Geoffrey Hill

“Dig -- the mostly uncouth -- language of grace.”
― Geoffrey Hill

“I wouldn't mind dispatching all 3 of my room mates vile felines in this apartment. Nasty beasts. I'm just afraid I wouldn't be able to sell "curiosity" as a serial killer.”
― Geoffrey Hill

“The storm that batters the magnolia’s
impermeable leaves, the long-drawn drum roll
of Martian thunder with its hail
...
lighting that makes stark-white the trees,
the walls, suspending them –
interminable instant – marbled manna
and cataclysm –”
― Geoffrey Hill after Montale

“Take accessible to mean / acceptable, accommodating, openly servile.”
― Geoffrey Hill

“Innocence is no earthly weapon.”
― Geoffrey Hill, New and Collected Poems, 1952-1992

“Recall the cold
Of Towton on Palm Sunday before dawn,
Wakefield, Tewkesbury : fastidious trumpets
Shrilling into the ruck ; some trampled
Acres, parched, sodden or blanched by sleet,
Stuck with strange-postured dead. Recall the wind's
Flurrying, darkness over the human mire.”
― Geoffrey Hill, King Log

“The risen Christ! Once more
faith is upon us,
a jubilant brief keening
with respite:

Obedience, bitter joy,
the elements, clouds,
winds, louvres where the bell
makes its wild mouths:

Holy Rus – into the rain’s
horizons, peacock-dyed
tail feathers of storm,
so it goes on.”
― Geoffrey Hill, Canaan: Poetry of Moral Urgency and Historical Witness―Suffering, Martyrdom, and the Millennium

“Last days, last things, loom on: I write / to astonish myself. So much for all / plain speaking...”
― Geoffrey Hill

“fierce tea making

in time of war,”
― Geoffrey Hill, Canaan: Poetry of Moral Urgency and Historical Witness―Suffering, Martyrdom, and the Millennium

“Who now would thrust enquiry on / Beyond necessity of desire?”
― Geoffrey Hill, Oraclau/Oracles

“I saw the angels lifted like pale straws;
I could not stand before those winnowing eyes.
And fell, until I found the world again.
Now I lack grace to tell what I have seen;
For though the head frames words the tongue has none.
And who will prove the surgeon to this stone?”
― Geoffrey Hill, Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952-2012

“Everything that I write is a kind of battle won—or lost—against silence and incoherence.” —Geoffrey Hill”
― Geoffrey Hill

“Even now, I tell myself, there is a language / to which I might speak and which / would rightly hear me...”
― Geoffrey Hill, The Triumph Of Love: Geoffrey Hill's Poetry Collection―Protest Against Evil, Tribute to Resistance

“Tragedy takes all under regard.”
― Geoffrey Hill, King Log

“This half-puzzled, awkward surprise is yours;
you cannot hear me or quite make me out.
Formalities preserve us:
perhaps I too am a shade.”
― Geoffrey Hill, Canaan: Poetry of Moral Urgency and Historical Witness―Suffering, Martyrdom, and the Millennium