DOCSLIB.ORG

A Legendary Poet

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Legendary Poet / Faculty Obituaries / A Legendary Poet Geoff rey Hill, lauded for his deep and complex verse | BY MARA SASSOON Sir Geoff rey Hill’s poetry— was the original Oxford University in 1953, often called “allusive” for its idea, 20 years ago, where he earned a degree esoteric religious, philosoph- for an Editorial in English and had his fi rst ical, and historical referenc- Institute to award work published by the poet es—earned him reverence degrees, doctoral and literary critic Donald in the literary community. and master’s, in Hall. After graduation, he Nicholas Lezard, a critic for editorial studies,” taught at the University The Guardian, hailed him says Ricks. of Leeds until 1980, when as “the greatest living poet Hill was known he completed a yearlong in the history of the English for his turns of Churchill Scholarship at the language” in a 2001 review phrases and quick University of Bristol. He was of Hill’s long poem Speech! humor in every- then a lecturer at Emmanuel Speech! and in a 2013 review day conversation. College, Cambridge. of his collection Broken Hier- Ricks says his In 1988, he moved to the archies: Poems 1952–2012. favorite anecdote United States when he ac- Hill, 84, a University Pro- is when Hill “was cepted a professorship at fessor emeritus and a College asked how he felt BU, where he taught for 18 of Arts & Sciences professor about a critic’s years. His multidisciplinary emeritus of literature and having won a prize expertise—he taught courses religion, died on June 30, for an essay on his not only on poetry, but also 2016, the same day his new work. He said, ‘Ask on 17th-century politics and translation of Henrik Ibsen’s the horse how he theology—brought him to Peer Gynt was published. Geoff rey Hill’s work was feels when the jockey wins the distinguished faculty of Bruce Redford, a CAS his- wide-ranging in form the race.’” Hill published UNI, which aimed to “build tory of art and architecture and style, from devo- many books of criticism: bridges between disciplines,” professor, and a director of tional poetry to prose The Lords of Limit: Essays and allowed students to the University Professors poetry, from rhyming to on Literature and Ideas create and graduate with program, which was closed free verse. (1984), The Enemy’s Coun- interdisciplinary degrees. in 2011, says Hill “resembled try: Words, Contexture, During his time at BU, both Jonathan Swift and and Other Circumstances of Hill published many poetry W. B. Yeats.” Like Swift, the poet Carl Phillips Language (1991), Style and collections, among them he says, “satire and proph- (GRS’93), a former student, Faith (2003), and Collected Canaan (1996), awarded ecy, humor and anger, were published in the Paris Critical Writings (2008), BU’s 1998 Kahn Award; The complexly intertwined in his Review, Hill said, “I think which won the Truman Triumph of Love (1998), extraordinary work. That art has a right—not an Capote Award for Literary which earned the Inger- work reached an autumnal obligation—to be diffi cult if Criticism. soll Foundation T. S. Eliot fl owering during his years it wishes. And, since people He often spoke “in a serio- Award for Creative Writing; at BU—a fl owering that generally go on from this comic tone that his friends and The Orchards of Syon resembles, in its vitality to talk about elitism versus and admirers were prone (2002), which was shortlist- and variety, the achieve- democracy, I would add that to call ‘Hill-arious,’” says ed for the T. S. Eliot Prize. ment of Yeats in old age.” genuinely diffi cult art is Redford. “In person and In 1996, Hill was elected Hill’s work was wide-rang- truly democratic.” on the page, Geoff rey re- to the American Academy of ing in form and style, from In 1999 he cofounded sembled an Old Testament Arts & Sciences. devotional poetry to prose BU’s Editorial Institute with prophet—but, unlike Jer- He retired in 2006, and poetry, from rhyming to free Christopher Ricks, BU’s Wil- emiah, he allowed himself moved back to England. In verse. Some critics pointed liam M. and Sara B. Warren to be teased, at least on occa- 2010, he accepted a four-year to a sense of exclusivity to Professor of the Humanities, sion, by lesser mortals.” term as professor of poetry his poetry that resulted from whom he knew from his days Born in Bromsgrove, Wor - at the University of Oxford, its notorious complexity. as a lecturer at the Univer- cestershire, England, in and in 2012 he was knighted BU PHOTOGRAPHY In a 2000 interview with sity of Cambridge. “His 1932, Hill graduated from for his services to literature. Fall 2016 BOSTONIA 79 74-C4 Bostonia_FA16.indd 79 9/30/16 5:04 PM.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Corpus Christi College the Pelican Record
    CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE THE PELICAN RECORD Vol. LI December 2015 CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE THE PELICAN RECORD Vol. LI December 2015 i The Pelican Record Editor: Mark Whittow Design and Printing: Lynx DPM Limited Published by Corpus Christi College, Oxford 2015 Website: http://www.ccc.ox.ac.uk Email: [email protected] The editor would like to thank Rachel Pearson, Julian Reid, Sara Watson and David Wilson. Front cover: The Library, by former artist-in-residence Ceri Allen. By kind permission of Nick Thorn Back cover: Stone pelican in Durham Castle, carved during Richard Fox’s tenure as Bishop of Durham. Photograph by Peter Rhodes ii The Pelican Record CONTENTS President’s Report ................................................................................... 3 President’s Seminar: Casting the Audience Peter Nichols ............................................................................................ 11 Bishop Foxe’s Humanistic Library and the Alchemical Pelican Alexandra Marraccini ................................................................................ 17 Remembrance Day Sermon A sermon delivered by the President on 9 November 2014 ....................... 22 Corpuscle Casualties from the Second World War Harriet Fisher ............................................................................................. 27 A Postgraduate at Corpus Michael Baker ............................................................................................. 34 Law at Corpus Lucia Zedner and Liz Fisher ....................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The End of the Word in Geoffrey Hill's Poetry
    CONSUMMATUM EST: THE END OF THE WORD IN GEOFFREY HILL’S POETRY THOMAS MICHAEL DOCHERTY PEMBROKE COLLEGE DECEMBER 2017 This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. CONSUMMATUM EST: THE END OF THE WORD IN GEOFFREY HILL’S POETRY THOMAS MICHAEL DOCHERTY This thesis intends to demonstrate that the idea of the end is a crucial motive of Geoffrey Hill’s poetry. It analyses the verbal and formal means by which Hill attempts to have his poems arrive at ends. The ends are, chiefly, the reconciliation of antagonists in word or thought; and the perfect articulation of the poem. The acknowledgement of failure to achieve such ends provides its own impetus to Hill’s work. The thesis examines in detail Hill’s puns, word-games, rhymes, syntaxes, and genres — their local reconciliations and entrenched contrarieties — and claims for them a significant place in the study of Hill’s poetry, particularly with regard to its sustained concern with ends and endings. Little has been written to date about Hill’s entire poetic corpus as represented in Broken Hierarchies (2013), due to the recentness of the work. This thesis draws from the earliest to the latest of Hill’s poetic writings; and makes extensive use of archival material. It steps beyond the ‘historical drama’ of language depicted in Matthew Sperling’s Visionary Philology (2014) and Alex Pestell’s Geoffrey Hill: The Drama of Reason (2016) and asserts that the drama in Hill’s poetry, seeking to transcend history, is constantly related to its end: not only its termination in time but its consummating purpose.
    [Show full text]
  • Ann Hassan's Annotations to Geoffrey Hill's Speech!
    Annotations to Geoffrey Hill's Speech! Speech! ANN HASSAN Annotations to Geoffrey Hill’s Speech! Speech! Annotations to Geoffrey Hill’s Speech! Speech! Ann Hassan Glossator Special Editions ANNOTATIONS TO GEOFFREY HILL’S SPEECH! SPEECH! © Ann Hassan, 2012. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0, or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This work is ‘Open Access,’ which means that you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors, that you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that you in no way alter, transform, or build upon the work outside of its normal use in academic scholarship without express permission of the author and the publisher of this volume. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. First published in 2012 by Glossator Special Editions, an imprint of punctum books (Brooklyn, NY) for Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary (glossator.org). Glossator publishes original commentaries, editions and translations of commentaries, and essays and articles relating to the theory and history of commentary, glossing, and marginalia. The journal aims to encourage the practice of commentary as a creative form of intellectual work and to provide a forum for dialogue and reflection on the past, present, and future of this ancient genre of writing.
    [Show full text]
  • Selected Poems: from Modernism to Now
    Selected Poems: From Modernism to Now Selected Poems: From Modernism to Now Edited by Hélène Aji and Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec Selected Poems: From Modernism to Now, Edited by Hélène Aji and Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec This book first published 2012 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2012 by Hélène Aji and Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4124-2, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4124-5 Published with the support of Université de Caen-Basse Normandie (ERIBIA EA 2610) and of Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense (CREA EA 370) TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: “Let us go then, you and I”............................................................. 1 Chapter One ...................................................................................................................... 5 “Dear Shade”: Louis MacNeice Selected and Recollected Susan Ang Chapter Two ...................................................................................................................23 Evaluating the Status of Ezra Pound’s Selected Cantos David Ten Eyck Chapter Three ................................................................................................................41
    [Show full text]
  • Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns WILLIAM S
    Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns WILLIAM S. MILNE N Mercian Hymns (1971) Geoffrey Hill discovers in the history and topography of his native West Midlands a Iparticular rhythm of life which he succeeds in conveying in the poem by an informing mythology and an analogous prose rhythm. He builds his poem around the figure of Offa who is not only the eighth century king of historical fact but also the imaginatively-conceived "presiding genius of the West Midlands."1 Hill praised George Eliot, the great novelist of the West Midlands, for being "a writer with a fine sense of traditional life" and in discussing a passage from Chapter 18 of Adam Bede, in which Adam listens to the "recurrent responses, and the familiar rhythm" of Anglican hymns or "collects", he generalized upon the subject of rhythm, adumbrating ideas which are directly relevant to his poetic method in Mercian Hymns: The responses are to be understood both as recurring within the limited time-span of a particular Anglican evensong, following the established pattern of the rubric, and as recurring over an implied and indefinite number of years, recurring Sunday by Sunday, season by season, year after year. It is by such means that "channels" are created; by the joint working of abrasion and continuity. "Responses" is the correct term for the established form of congregational participation in the liturgy. At the same time, over and below this literal meaning, the word connotes the continuity of human response in general to an ancient process of parochial and national life. The collects of the Anglican Church are composed of liturgical prose; they could properly be said to possess rhythm, though not metre .
    [Show full text]
  • A Reading of Geoffrey Hill's a Treatise of Civil Power
    1 The Redemption of History: A Reading of Geoffrey Hill’s A Treatise of Civil Power Geoffrey Hill practises a kind of aesthetic austerity of style in A Treatise of Civil Power (2005/2007) that in the end must be reckoned a part of its meaning, its vision of the body politic, power, and culture.1 Three elements combine in this respect: difficulty (so called), the constraining or tamping down of the lyric voice, and subject-matter. In relation to Hill “difficulty” is a hoary trope, and should not be exaggerated here. A good number of the thirty-one poems present only a modest level of difficulty to the patient reader; however, others, such as “On Reading Milton and the English Revolution” and “A Précis or Memorandum of Civil Power,” are challenging, and their challenge, a deliberate recalcitrance to easy- 1 A Treatise of Civil Power exists in three versions: (1) the original limited-edition pamphlet, Clutag Press, Thame (2005); (2) the version published by Yale University Press in the US and Penguin in the UK (2007); and the version quoted here, in Geoffrey Hill, Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952–2012, ed. Kenneth Haynes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013): 557–601. The essential argument and vision of the collection— my main concern—is the same in the different versions. (2) and (3) do not vary much: (3) shortens “On Reading Crowds and Power” to its first verse-paragraph, deleting the three other sections, and leaves out altogether “On Reading Burke on Empire, Liberty and Reform.” When I refer to the latter, I use the Penguin text.
    [Show full text]
  • English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88306-1 - The Cambridge History of English Poetry Edited by Michael O’Neill Frontmatter More information THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY Poetry written in English is uniquely powerful and suggestive in its capacity to surprise, unsettle, shock, console and move. The Cambridge History of English Poetry offers sparklingly fresh and dynamic readings of an extraordinary range of poets and poems from Beowulf to Alice Oswald. An international team of experts explores how poets in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland use language and to what effect, examining questions of form, tone and voice; they comment, too, on how formal choices are inflected by the poet’s time and place. The Cambridge History of English Poetry is the most comprehensive and authoritative history of the field from Anglo-Saxon times to the present. It traces patterns of con- tinuity, transformation, transition and development. Covering a remarkable array of poets and poems, and featuring an extensive bibliography, the scope and depth of this major work of reference make it required reading for anyone interested in poetry. M ICHAEL O’N EILL is Professor of English at Durham University. He has published widely on poetry and is a published poet himself. His recent publications include The All-Sustaining Air: Romantic Legacies and Renewals in British, American and Irish Poetry (2007)and Wheel (2008), a collection of poems. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88306-1 - The
    [Show full text]
  • Job Description and Selection Criteria
    Job Description and Selection Criteria Post Professorship of Poetry Department/Faculty Faculty of English Language and Literature Division Humanities College All Souls, or another college by agreement Overview of the post The Professorship of Poetry is due to become vacant in Michaelmas Term 2015, when the current incumbent, Professor Sir Geoffrey Hill, reaches the end of his term of office. The appointment to re-fill the Chair will be made by election of Convocation in Trinity Term 2015. All members of Convocation are eligible to vote in the election1. The elected candidate will hold office for four years from 11 October 2015, the first day of Michaelmas Term 2015. The Professor of Poetry lectures were conceived in 1708, as a result of a bequest by Berkshire landowner Henry BirKhead, who believed ‘the reading of the ancient poets gave Keenness and polish to the minds of young men as well as to the advancement of more serious literature both sacred and human’. Matthew Arnold, uniquely elected twice to the Professorship (in 1857 and 1862), created the Professorship in its modern form: Arnold spoKe about literary matters of contemporary concern, and was the first Professor to deliver his lectures in English, as opposed to Latin. The appointee will be the 45th Professor of Poetry (a full list of holders of the Chair is available at http://www.ox.ac.uk/about/oxford-people/professor-of-poetry). The professorship is held in the Faculty of English Language and Literature. The Faculty of English at Oxford University is the largest department of English Literature in the UK and is widely recognised as one of the most eminent in the world.
    [Show full text]
  • Geoffrey Hill: the Quest for Mystical Communion and Community Author(S): Henry Hart Source: Religion & Literature, Vol
    University of Notre Dame Geoffrey Hill: The Quest for Mystical Communion and Community Author(s): Henry Hart Source: Religion & Literature, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Spring, 2007), pp. 1-26 Published by: University of Notre Dame Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40060052 Accessed: 08-01-2016 06:31 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Notre Dame is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Religion & Literature. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions GEOFFREYHILL: THE QUEST FOR MYSTICAL COMMUNION AND COMMUNITY Henry Hart FewAmerican readers had heardof GeoffreyHill when Houghton Mif- flin publishedhis first three books as SomewhereIs Sucha Kingdomin 1975. Harold Bloom's introductionseemed designed to raise the eyelids of a snoozing audience. "Strongpoetry is always difficult,"he declared with a stentorianflourish, "and GeoffreyHill is the strongestBritish poet now alive, though his reputationin the English-speakingworld is somewhatless advancedthan that of severalof his contemporaries"(xiii). With regardto Hill's place in poetic tradition,Bloom contended: "The true precursoris alwaysBlake, and the War in Heaven that the strongpoet must conduct is fought by Hill against Blake, and against Blake'stradition, and so against Hill himself" (xiii).As an Oxford student in 1953, Hill, in fact, had writ- ten a reviewin TheIsis criticizing Blake's Jerusalem for being too diffuse(he preferredBlake's shorter lyrics).
    [Show full text]
  • Form, Error, and Alchemy in Geoffrey Hill's Ludo and the Daybooks
    This is a repository copy of “A final clarifying”: Form, Error, and Alchemy in Geoffrey Hill’s Ludo and The Daybooks. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/136807/ Version: Accepted Version Article: O'Hanlon, K (2018) “A final clarifying”: Form, Error, and Alchemy in Geoffrey Hill’s Ludo and The Daybooks. Etudes Anglaises, 71 (2). pp. 207-221. ISSN 0014-195X This article is protected by copyright. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Etudes Anglaises. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ ‘A final clarifying’: Form, Error, and Alchemy in Geoffrey Hill’s Ludo and The Daybooks In his poem ‘It Is Writing’, Geoffrey Hill’s contemporary and fellow Mercian Roy Fisher declares ‘I mistrust the poem in its hour of success’.1 Fisher’s poem ‘Staffordshire Red’ which appeared in Stand in 1977 was dedicated to Hill who, according to Fisher, greeted this gesture with a terse query as to what he was doing in Hill’s imagination.2 The pair have appeared in several critical studies as a foil to the other’s technical and affective priorities.3 Fisher himself remarked upon the supposed difference: [Hill is] always more structured and more controlled [than me].
    [Show full text]
  • Michaelmas 2011 · No. 90
    CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE · CAMBRIDGE The Letter Michae lmas 2011 · No. 90 The Letter (formerly Letter of the Corpus Association) Michae lmas 2011 No. 90 Corpus Christi College Cambridge Corpus Christi College The Letter michaelmas 2011 The College is most grateful to Christopher Hill (m 1960) and Michael Gwinnell (m 1964) for generously supporting this issue of The Letter. Editors The Master Oliver Rackham Peter Carolin assisted by Simon Heffer Contact The Editors The Letter Corpus Christi College Cambridge cb2 1rh [email protected] Production Designed by Dale Tomlinson Typeset in Arno Pro and Cronos Pro Printed by the BPC Group, Cambridge on 90gsm Pacesetter Silk (Forest Stewardship Council certified) The Letter on the web www.corpus.cam.ac.uk/old-members/alumni-news News and Contributions Members of the College are asked to send to the Editors any news of themselves, or of each other, which should be included in The Letter, and to send prompt notification of any change in their permanent address. Erratum The title of John Hatcher’s address on the Black Death inThe Letter no. 89 p. 15 should have read ‘For the souls of the departed in the mortality of the year of the Lord 1349 and after’. Cover illustration: Leckhampton House from the garden. 2 michaelmas 2011 The Letter Corpus Christi College Contents The Society Page 5 Domus 9 Addresses and reflections 50 years ago... a new type of College society 12 Leckhampton: idealism and fairness 14 Changing the balance of admissions 17 War and Law: Iraq, Chilcot and beyond 23 Utopia and death in the Ulu 33 ‘to the daily preparation of death’ 39 The importance of benefactions to colleges 45 Then and Now 48 The Fellowship News of Fellows 52 Visiting and Teacher Fellowships 53 A Visiting Fellow’s Year 54 A Teacher Fellow’s view 56 Fellows’ publications 57 The College Year Senior Tutor’s report 62 Leckhampton Life 63 The Libraries 65 The Chapel 66 College Music and Chapel Choir 69 Bursary matters 71 Development and Communications Office 72 College staff 74 Post-graduates Postgraduate numbers 76 Approved for Ph.Ds.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Oxford Annual Review, 2009/10
    For further information please contact: The University of Oxford Public Affairs Directorate University Offices Wellington Square Oxford OX1 2JD Telephone: +44 (0)1865 270010 Facsimile: +44 (0)1865 280535 Annual Review Email: [email protected] Website: www.ox.ac.uk/publicaffairs 2009/10 University of Oxford 2009/10 Review Annual Annual Review 2009/10 The mission of the University of Oxford is to achieve and sustain excellence in every area of its teaching and research, maintaining and developing its historical position as a world-class university, and enriching the international, national and regional communities through the fruits of its research, the skills of its alumni and the publishing of academic and educational materials. www.ox.ac.uk Supplement *1 to Oxford University Gazette, Vol. 141 (January 2011) Annual Review 2009/10 2009/10 Review Annual Contents 1 The Vice-Chancellor’s foreword 20 Environmental sustainability 2 Year in review 22 Honorary degrees 4 Pigeons in flight – lessons to be learned 25 Honours and awards The Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts 26 New heads of house 6 Digital Edition 28 New appointments How radiocarbon dating helps place 8 the Pharaohs in time 30 Giving to Oxford 10 Making a difference – at a stroke 35 Financial review 12 Challenges in wonderland 36 External research funding 14 Reaching out 37 Appendices Pioneering thinking that inspired a 16 Student numbers worldwide campaign response 1. Total students 2. Students by nationality Recognising students' social 3. Undergraduates 18 commitment 4. Postgraduates The Vice-Chancellor's foreword 2009/10 Review Annual As any year draws to a close, there is the opportunity both to reflect on the past 12 months and look ahead to the next.
    [Show full text]