[Selected Poems of Geoffrey Hill] [By: Hill, Geoffrey] [June, 2006]

by Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill’s poetry comprises one of the most uncompromising and visionary bodies of work written over the last fifty years. Imbued with the weight of history, morality, and language, his work reveals a deeply religious sensibility, a towering intellect, and an emotional complexity that are unrivaled in contemporary letters. Now, for the first time ever, readers can observe in one volume how Hill’s style took shape over time. This generous selection spans his career, beginning with poems from Hill’s astonishing debut, For the Unfallen, and following through to his stylistically distinct and critically acclaimed work Without Title. Including some of the poet’s strongest, most sensitive, and most brilliant pieces, this collection will reaffirm Hill’s reputation as “England’s best hope for the Nobel Prize.”

Genres: Poetry, British Literature, Contemporary

Paperback

First published June 1, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Sir Geoffrey William Hill was an English poet and professor emeritus of English literature and religion.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

The Princes of Mercia were raven and badger I read in 60 Poems on a Journey, from that I went on to buy this simply to read the whole of Hill's cycle The Mercian Hymns. The poet I suppose makes themselves through their verse and writing is self definition, here he locates himself in the long vanished kingdom of Mercia and stands in relation to King Offa but also to the natural world- the badger and the raven ruling in the air and below the ground( Tutting, he wrenched at a snarled root of dead crabapple. It rose against him. In brief cavort he was Cernunnos, the branched god, lightly concussed. ), in the past he calls forth,
the descendent of nailmakers becomes himself an aristocrat through poetry in places identifying himself with Offa Overlord of the M5 in Hill's telling as well as the friend of Charlemagne no one would ever want to be his unfriend.

It is all strangely moving, combining a kind of deep wildness from the west Midlands with tropes of cultivated Mediterranean verse, this wouldn't be foreign to Virgil.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Theology makes good bedside reading. Some
who are lost covet scholastic proof,
subsistence of probation, modest balm.

This is a very mixed bag of verse, one which astounds, confounds, unnerves and sometimes squeaks from its own strain. Very human, that. Culled from a number of collections, Hill finds it necessary to not only lament, but to cite -- once he became an academic. Book titles clutter stanzas in an odd jumble.

Clamorous love, its faint and baffled shout,
its grief that would betray him to our fear,
he suffers for our sake, or does not hear

I happen to love that vantage of Christianity and its unfortunate, often bewildered, savior. As noted, I lost a close friend this week and then found some solace as my wife and I saw Bob Dylan perform. These twinned offerings, which yield and smote during our harvest bend remind us, it is something, some thing to be alive.

Where.
you will say, does explanation
end and confession begin?

[Sam Lien · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the biggest fan of Geoffrey Hill. He's too obsessed with inserting Latin, French, and other biblical references in his poetry. I suppose this is more of a difference in taste. That said, 'The Songbook of Sebastian Arrurruz' is wonderful.

[Luigi Sposato · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know when you read someone else's work and it's just everything you've ever wanted and more?

Yeah.

[Adam Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Why does the air grow cold in the region of mirrors?
And who is this clown
doffing his mask at
the masked threshold
to selfless raptures that are all his own?"

[Hao Guang Tse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Hill sags after Canaan and only picks up again in Without Title, but what do I know, I without Latin or French or a History of England...

[Thomas Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hill sure is a strange one. He definitely has the dense, surreal and conversational qualties of Dylan Thomas and Ashbery but he seems much more queitly messianic than those two. And this is where I find that the religious influences both quite invigorating and annoying. To get off with the negative Hill clearly has too much reference for Chistianity which leads him to use stereotypical imagery as if it were something profound. On the positive note he does gradually and comfortably introduce you to the end of the world via industrial warfare, the press, motorways and the internet in a way that belies the whimper of the end.

(Also one of the few poets to get worse as he aged, the collection after the Peguy poem, and then suddenly write some of his verse work as he got, even, older. Poets are usaully linear creatures).

[zunggg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Muscular, grappling poetry with more Anglo-Saxonisms per square word than Beowulf - but Hill seems hobbled by academia; compelled to lard his every subject with God and Kierkegaard. I want him to cut loose with his poetic muckspreader and bespatter the various traditions; instead he's bent on creating an orthodoxy of his own.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not expect to like these poems as much as I do. The more difficult the poem, the more I am drawn in. I particularly like Hill's retelling of an old Mercian chronicle. It is as if we must wrestle with the language along with the poet. That struggle makes all of these poems worth it.

This is not an easy read! I have started rereading it and expect I will be rereading it for many years to come.

[J.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were some in this collection that I really liked, and some that were not so great. However, what I did enjoy about Hill's poetry was their depth. It takes readign them a few times, but there is still a simpler way to look at them that makes them still enjoyable even if you do not fully undertand them.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some excellent poetry here. A little T S Eliotish. But nothing that I really fell in love with the way I did with Eliot. However it may just need some rereading as it is rather dense and allusory in places.

[D. Pow · Rating 5 out of 5]

The finest living English-language poet.

[Paul Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult; wonderfully so. Best poet writing in English (but say it quietly)

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of poetry but I didn’t think there would be so much biblical references in theses poems. I guess it’s just not my taste…

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I want my money back.

[UChicagoLaw]

Selected Poems is a collection of perhaps the most interesting living English poet. At once deeply obscure and violently immediate, Hill’s rich and startling poems confound, baffle, and yet linger in the mind like unexploded ordinance. Comparisons to Seamus Heaney are both justified and illuminating. - Aziz Z. Huq