3.29.2010

Geoffrey Hill

Have been reading Geoffrey Hill's book from late '90s, Testament of Love. Like a cello solo by Rostropovich.

Hill does in his own poetry what he seeks out, in his scholarship, in the English poets of past eras. That is, he bears witness to "the whole truth" (as poetry can reckon the whole, as a unity) in & of history. To the broken promises, the fracturings of European civilization, in the light of suffering & prophetic judgement. Sub specie eternitatis.

I didn't put that very well. Not easy to summarize Geoffrey Hill... !

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