I have a bad feeling about Warwick at the moment, although my niece
graduated there, cos Steve Fuller, the Sociology prof is giving evidence in
support of Behe at the Kansas evolution trial. These people who oppose the
Enlightenment are very much concentrated in Sociology departments where they
argue that Science is just another discourse.
Douglas Clark, Bath, Somerset, England ....
http://www.dgdclynx.plus.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dominic Fox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 2:05 PM
Subject: Re: Geoffrey Hill: The Orchards of Syon
I saw Hill at Warwick University, where lots of other academic types
had also come to see him (there was some conference on, which I wasn't
part of). So I went and I stood on my own, and I left on my own, and
shortly after that I gave up my PhD on Hill altogether. I think the
clincher was standing in line to have my copy of Speech! Speech!
signed, and the chap in front of me saying to Hill that he was writing
a thesis on him, and could he please inscribe the book with something
encouraging like "don't give up! love, G.H.". Poor fellow, I wish him
no ill will, but a sort of terrible self-disgust welled up in me at
that moment. I did not confide my own aspirations to the great man: I
told him that I had liked the book very much, thanked him for signing
it, and left it at that.
Hill himself was quite unlike the burly, black-cloaked figure
declaiming through clenched teeth that one might have been expecting
(although he is quite big). There was a touch of the music hall
performer about him, in fact; he made a great show of drinking a glass
of water. Quite a musical voice - he was *performing* the work, and
its voices - so by turns discursive, lecturing, declamatory,
soliloquising and so on. He got quite a few laughs, especially out of
the material from Speech! Speech! People do rather miss the comedy in
Hill (I miss it myself, in much of The Orchards of Syon, although it
has its moments). There was also, this being a room full of academics,
a fair amount of scribbling in notebooks as he brought the new stuff
out. Not my idea of how you listen to poetry, but then I was cribbing
from him on a deeper level. Or at least that was what I wanted to tell
myself.
Dominic
On 10/25/05, Joanna Boulter <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> You've seen him read? Wow!
>
> What's he like as a reader? I mean, rhetorical, soliloquising, or a twist
> between incantatory and vicious -- I could imagine any of those styles
> fitting with the work.
>
> joanna
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dominic Fox" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 10:00 AM
> Subject: Re: Geoffrey Hill: The Orchards of Syon
>
>
> I saw Hill read some of the Orchards of Syon poems before they were
> published. They came across well in that context. I must admit though
> that the sequence doesn't really grab me - all those flame-pelts of
> denuded hawthorn, self-perjuring / arbiters of contrition | revamping
> their perdurance...
>
> Dominic
>
--
Shall we be pure or impure? Today
we shall be very pure. It must always
be possible to contain
impurities in a pure way.
--Tarmo Uustalu and Varmo Vene
--
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