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The Poetry of Geoffrey Hill Masthead Logo The Iowa Review Volume 3 Article 42 Issue 3 Summer 1972 The oP etry of Geoffrey Hill Jon Silkin Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Silkin, Jon. "The oeP try of Geoffrey Hill." The Iowa Review 3.3 (1972): 108-128. Web. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.1404 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The oI wa Review by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Poetry of Geoffrey Hill Jon Silkin 1 The word 'formal' in criticism associates ideas metrical often with concerning iambic, strict stanzaic form and rhyme, and the containment by these devices of whatever the has to It be used since the current poet say. may approvingly, or, has run more the other as a means of that a recently way, implying poet using these forms has little to say, and that his sensibility and imagination are insensi a tive, that the courage poet needs in order to articulate what ought essentially to be his way of exploring life is absent. As corollary to this, it is implied that only what is new in structure can it is sensitively and honestly engage this, since, we are argued, in the midst of such changes that only those forms originated by can the poet in co-operation with his constantly changing environment adequately as so express the new (as well the past and hidden) in the tormenting life many are forced to live. one The second position is persuasive, providing keeps in mind the counter caveat that more-or-less defined the balancing every position provides grounds for much bad work; but even if the second position seems to account for a greater share of low-tension poetry, it is arguable that the position has helped into existence poetry that might not otherwise have got written ( vide Alvarez writing of Plath and citing Lowell1 ). On the other hand one might ask what there is in such a for whose work contrasts so position Hill, strongly with, say, Ginsberg, and the Hughes of Crow. There is however another of which involves the way defining 'formal', origina tion constraints and tensions con of with those forms themselves evolved by the cerns of the writer and his as he or she worked these. One sensibility, might say a that co-existing condition of the material evolving its forms involved, for this a a kind of formal writer, productive impediment, compacting of certain forms of the material into a mode of and close speech, refracting compression conjunction not normally found in speech, and which, probably, could not be found there. Such a definition, however, would imply that the mode of response, which could be brought to conscious active thought, was habitual to such a writer. The a as question of conjunction is especially important to such poet Hill, and in to a making these definitions, I have been trying illustrate both general type and a writer. identify particular own on a Such formality bears with its problems. The payments such premium are continuous, and one way of apprehending this condition in Hill's work is to to consider consider the variety of forms; the restlessness within the variety. occurs Formality of the first sort with Hill's early poem 'Genesis',2 although here 108 University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Iowa Review ® www.jstor.org seems are it that the formal iambic line, stanza, and section, used to express that already stylized conception of earth's creation; and that the formality while representing such stylization is already at odds with the central theme of the poem There is no bloodless myth will hold and to a lesser extent with the sub-theme's concession And by Christ's blood are men made free. Hill's with himself over formal means and is 'argument expressiveness already embryonically visible in the poem, but, for the moment, one might consider the difference in form between this 'In Fraser'?a say poem (and memory of Jane un poem he has had trouble with) and 'September Song';3 between that, and the rhymed sonnets of 'Funeral Music'4 and between all these and the prose hymns (canticles) of Mercian Hymns. one Restlessness of forms is not something would normally associate with Hill's work, but this is probably because the voice is unusually present and distinct. Sometimes it becomes over-distinctive, and this is usually the result of the formal means into mannerisms. Even a voice cannot itself more degenerating so, provide than a spurious unity, and to put on it work that is beyond its proper capacity a produces the strain that exists in fraction of Hill's work. This 'mannered' and 'mild humility' however is more often disrupted by the variety of forms. Is it im or an to find one and therefore aginative experimentation, inability embracing am controlling mode? It could be argued that such unity is undesirable, but I suggesting that for a poet such as Hill, unity of form, as of thought and response, are important. This is why we have such apparently absolute control within each poem (or form) but such variety of form over the spread of his work so far. Each of absoluteness a concession to the intract fragment represents pragmatic able nature of the matter and response to it in each poem. One is glad that it is and it reflects the between and the so, on-going struggle form, expressiveness, even scrupulous attention Hill usually gives to his material, when it is struggling as against that oppressive attention so to retain an existence (in life) independent of his own. 2 Hill's use of and choice of has been one to language, words, noticed, often, feels, the detriment of his themes. One sympathizes with the reviewers. The compressed language is intimately bound up with what it is conveying. This is true of many true to an with It is true in another sense. The poets, but unusual degree Hill. an language itself is unlike most other writing current, and coupled with this is on unusually self-conscious pointing the part of the poet to the language. This is not because he wishes to draw attention to it for its own sake, but because the an language both posits his concerns, and is itself, in the way it is used, instance of them. Moreover, his use of language is both itself an instance of his (moral) concerns, and the sensuous gesture that defines them. It is therefore difficult to contact speak of his themes without coming first into necessary with the language. Hill's use of irony is ubiquitous, but is not, usually, of the non-participatory or and mandarin sort. It articulates the collision of events, brings them together out this a more or less and use of is of concern, and for regular simple syntax needed, and used. 109 Criticism Undesirable you may have been, untouchable were you not. - A concentration victim.5 Even the in the subtitle 'born 19.6.32 de camp 'play' ported 24.9.42' where the natural event of birth is placed, simply, beside the hu man and murderous as if latter were same 'deported' the of the order and inevi for the in some it was?even here the wit tability victim; which, senses, zeugmatic is fully employed. The irony of conjuncted meanings between 'undesirable' on a (touching both sexual desire and racism) and 'untouchable', which exploits reverses similar ambiguity but the emphases, is unusually dense and simple. The on confrontation is direct and unavoidable, and this directness is brought to bear not the reader only by the vocabulary, but by the balancing directness of the This stanza contains one of Hill's because of syntax. dangerous words?dangerous its too frequent use, and because these words sometimes unleash (though not here) a too evident irony: Not forgotten or over at the time. passed proper 'Proper' brings together the idea of bureaucratically correct 'as calculated' by the logistics of the 'final solution' and the particular camp's timetable; it also contrasts the idea of the mathematically 'correct' with the morally intolerable. It touches, on too, the distinction between what is morally right, and what is conventionally on acceptable, and incidentally brings to bear the whole the way in which the conventionally acceptable is often used to cloak the morally unacceptable. One a of Hill's grim jokes, deployed in such way that the laughter is precisely propor tionate to is is excess the needs of ironic exposure. It when the irony in of the con situation that the wit becomes mannered. But here it does not. So the poem tinues, remorselessly. As died. estimated, you Things marched, sufficient, to that end. One feels the little quibbling movement in As estimated, you died. as, without wishing to verbalise it, Hill points to the disturbing contrast between the well-functioning timetable and what it achieved. "Things marched" has the tread of pompous authority, immediately, in the next line, qualified by the pain so fully accurate recognition that just much energy was needed, and released, for a the extermination. 'Sufficient' implies economy, but it also implies conscious un qualification of the heavy, pompous tread of authority. The quiet function of pretentious machinery fulfilled its programme, perhaps more lethally. One also notices here now the lineation the flow and retraction of gauges, exactly, meaning so a sensuous and impulse, and how this exact rhythmical flow is much part of the delivery of response and evaluation.
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