Took Good Friday off. Did my taxes (2 states, 4 hrs - the old way, with pencil). Then sat in little backyard (sun already gone) & read Geoffrey Hill, Collected Essays.

Hill is really the Mountain of poetry in English; the normative, the bringing-it-all-back-home. Hard to follow sometimes, because for him there is a stretch of about 4-500 yrs (1550-2009) of English poetry & prose, which is all one mountain range (are there mountains in England? There are Welsh Hills) to contemplate, take in, evaluate. Serious dark bitter honey. Stringent, accurate, humorous, conscientious... Kind of a deep player, ranging over vast areas of the already-studied, finding new unlooked-for furrows & grooves... in the Book of Everlasting.

I'd like to meet him someday. & write something corrective to the picayune snipes & miss-the-target-by-a-long-shots magazine blab (or maybe I just haven't noticed the more attentive readers).