Jeffrey Wainwright
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719067549
- eISBN:
- 9781781703359
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719067549.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter begins by presenting the first stanza of John Milton's ‘The Passion’, a poem he probably began and abandoned in 1630. The penultimate line, ‘In Wintry solstice like the shorten'd light’, ...
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This chapter begins by presenting the first stanza of John Milton's ‘The Passion’, a poem he probably began and abandoned in 1630. The penultimate line, ‘In Wintry solstice like the shorten'd light’, recurs in Geoffrey Hill's Scenes from Comus, including in the very last lines of the work. Milton's lines also point to another major preoccupation of Hill's poem, music. Hill keeps his own music going towards ‘long out-living night’ when that of the young Milton fails, but his concern is not only with the endurance of his verse, here metaphorically cast as ‘music’. Scenes from Comus is first an occasional poem, written ‘for Hugh Wood on his 70th Birthday’. Wood is Hill's contemporary to the year and month.Less
This chapter begins by presenting the first stanza of John Milton's ‘The Passion’, a poem he probably began and abandoned in 1630. The penultimate line, ‘In Wintry solstice like the shorten'd light’, recurs in Geoffrey Hill's Scenes from Comus, including in the very last lines of the work. Milton's lines also point to another major preoccupation of Hill's poem, music. Hill keeps his own music going towards ‘long out-living night’ when that of the young Milton fails, but his concern is not only with the endurance of his verse, here metaphorically cast as ‘music’. Scenes from Comus is first an occasional poem, written ‘for Hugh Wood on his 70th Birthday’. Wood is Hill's contemporary to the year and month.
Jeffrey Wainwright
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719067549
- eISBN:
- 9781781703359
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719067549.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Geoffrey Hill has said that some great poetry ‘recognises that words fail us’. This book explores his struggle over fifty years with the recalcitrance of language. It seeks to show how all Hill's ...
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Geoffrey Hill has said that some great poetry ‘recognises that words fail us’. This book explores his struggle over fifty years with the recalcitrance of language. It seeks to show how all Hill's work is marked by the quest for the right pitch of utterance whether it is sorrowing, angry, satiric or erotic. The book shows how Hill's words are never lightly ‘acceptable’ but an ethical act, how he seeks out words he can stand by—words that are ‘getting it right’. It is a comprehensive critical work on Geoffrey Hill, covering all his work up to Scenes from Comus (2005), as well as some poems yet to appear in book form.Less
Geoffrey Hill has said that some great poetry ‘recognises that words fail us’. This book explores his struggle over fifty years with the recalcitrance of language. It seeks to show how all Hill's work is marked by the quest for the right pitch of utterance whether it is sorrowing, angry, satiric or erotic. The book shows how Hill's words are never lightly ‘acceptable’ but an ethical act, how he seeks out words he can stand by—words that are ‘getting it right’. It is a comprehensive critical work on Geoffrey Hill, covering all his work up to Scenes from Comus (2005), as well as some poems yet to appear in book form.
