PS
On Geoffrey Hill: one of the many unusual features of the world of my youth
was a philosophical workers' commune based at Acocks Green railway station
in Birmingham. What had happened was that a group of university graduates
had decided to opt out of the rat-race by becoming the complete staff of a
then British Rail suburban railway station and renting a shared house
around the corner. One of them was formerly a student of Hill's at Leeds
and, apart from his anecdote about Hill having a huge poster of Betjeman at
which he threw darts, I recall a conversation in which I predicted that
Hill, then the author of just 4 collections in twenty years, would, in
retirement, do a St John Perse, and become an over-producer, to the
detriment of his writing and, ultimately, reputation. Unfortunately the
conversation was not recorded so I have lost yet another opportunity to
prove my infinite sagacity :)
best
david
On 30 May 2012 06:52, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Yes, it seems strange to say it, but the Geoffrey Hill of 2012 vintage *needs
> an editor*. The opening poem of Odi Barbare has some wonderful lines, not
> in the stanza quoted though, and others which should have been safely
> buried in a pets' cemetery.
>
> 'verdictive', as I'd remarked, was a coinage by the ex-MI6 man and Oxford
> philosopher J.L.Austin, who believed in *traditional* language, so much
> so he also inflicted 'performative', the beats-all-comers pseud's corner
> word in modern poetry talk, to the poor battered world.
>
>
> On 29 May 2012 23:46, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> The word “infrastructure” is not a Larkin word. For that, you would need
>> a very different kind of poetry, say Geoffrey Hill’s High Modernism in
>> ancient sapphics, the first poem in his new volume Odi Barbare (2012):
>>
>> Anarchs’ paradiso the infrastructure,
>> Luck permitting love and its grave verdictives.
>> Some have gone purblind and athwart our sensors,
>> Broken not brain dead.
>>
>> see current NYRB online
>> Ricks on Larkin
>
>
>
>
> --
> David Joseph Bircumshaw
> "We are shallow, mababaw ang kaligayahan."
> -* F. Sionil José*
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
> twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
>
--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
"We are shallow, mababaw ang kaligayahan."
-* F. Sionil José*
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
|