During this torrid summer, refuge was found in the poetry of Geoffrey Hill, a writer who celebrates an elusive reality of mythical dimensions. The ‘marked / visible absences’ at the centre of Tenebrae share common ground with Samuel Beckett’s failed attempts to express the inexpressible and Maria Gabriela Llansol’s deliberate move away from narrativity into metaphor and figure.
Hill’s meticulous use of language renders stark the impoverishment of the vocabulary of much contemporary writing, contaminated by the sound-bites of social media and journalism. To strive against this impoverishment, and in search of a particular clarity, Hill is indebted to the OED, the ‘rock out of which my present discourse is hewn, the quarry of my distinctions and definitions’.
Language reveals itself through Hill’s voice. This restorative character, distinct from quotidian discourse, is what draws readers to writers like Beckett, Llansol, and Friederike Mayröcker. It is where, to paraphrase Wallace Stevens, an hour of inexpressible bliss may be found.
Approaching poetry often carries a sense of inadequacy, scepticism that a non-poet can write about a poem penetratingly. There remains a desire to apprehend better. A recent request posed to serious readers of poetry — seeking recommendations for contemporary poets writing insightful criticism, akin to Hughes on Shakespeare or Eliot on Donne — yielded several suggestions, offering possible new ways to engage with poetry’s unique powers.
Have you read Christopher Middleton’s diary entries? There are a few in ‘If from the Distance’ and quite a lot more in ‘Palavers & A Nocturnal Journal’.
Thanks for the suggestions. I haven’t come across those, but will seek them out.
‘Palavers & A Nocturnal Journal’ is wonderful. Thank you so much for the introduction.