In 2012 OUP published Geoffrey Hill’s Collected Poems; they could have waited, because they’re now going to need another edition. Between 2012 and his death, aged 84, in 2016, Hill wrote another 271 poems, and here they are — although, given his productivity since the mid-1990s, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were plenty more. But the poems in The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin look as though they are part of a deliberate and ordered sequence, all of them using the same form, of irregular lines, occasional internal rhymes and Hill’s characteristic style, hopping over centuries with semi-cryptic allusions, barks of rage and mordant humour. I say ‘semi-cryptic’ because sometimes it is hard to follow his trains of thought. Take the 196th poem in the sequence:
The ‘high dome of Paul’s’ appears to crouch, these days, unless you approach
from the direction of the Fleet ditch; which is in any case the way of
tradition whose rites still confer benefits upon the nation.
The dry-mouthed state trumpeters contrive to spit a pure high note. The vault jitters
at the impetus, and, far below, something small immodestly clatters.
Cargo-cult majesty in Perrault travesty? Maybe, but not her fault.
It dawns on you that he is talking about the state funeral of Margaret Thatcher, but you have to join the dots between the allusion to Blake’s ‘Holy Thursday’ (‘the high dome of Paul’, in quotation marks), the significance of the Fleet ditch, the fact that St Paul’s is now dwarfed by new buildings (and does it ‘crouch’ in order to pounce, or out of subjection?), the weight or spin placed on words like ‘benefits’, ‘contrive’, and indeed ‘spit’, and the reference to the 17th-century writer Charles Perrault.
Hill’s chosen form, like Christopher Smart on steroids (for I will consider my poet Geoffrey, who also alludes to Smart within the work), allows him great freedom, and if there are some out there who will argue that this is not poetry, it’s certainly not prosaic.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in