Photograph, The Guardian.
The Guardian reports, "Geoffrey Hill, a poet regularly hailed as the greatest in the English language, died suddenly on 30 June at the age of 84".
Hill was a supremely gifted poet and essayist. Despite living for many years in the USA, he belonged to a long tradition of "English" poets, writing of England, its history and conventions; often framing these poems within his own experiences, many of childhood, having grown up in Bromsgrove, in the Midlands. However, European history was not beyond his remit.
His popularity suffered due a minsconception that his poems were inaccessable when in fact they were unpatronising ; respecting the audience's intelligence to use their own readings and skills of inference rather than hand out 'meaning' on a plate. He was also accused of being earnest as cerebral as if these were flaws when in fact several readings of his poems revealed gentle self-mockery, self-effacement, humour, irony and joy for life.
Below is one of Hill's better known poems. This choice seems fitting ,given the events of the last decade, wherein to decry the horror and pain, runs the danger of petering to a tweeness and cliche where one senses a difficulty in expressing such outcry without sounding trite amid 'so many routine cries'. This is one of the themes Hill explores in the poem, the dates given being that of the timeline of a Jewish girl, deported to a Concentration Camp.
Stephen
September Song
Related Poem Content Details
born 19.6.32—deported 24.9.42
Undesirable you may have been, untouchable
you were not. Not forgotten
or passed over at the proper time.
As estimated, you died. Things marched,
sufficient, to that end.
Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented
terror, so many routine cries.
(I have made
an elegy for myself it
is true)
September fattens on vines. Roses
flake from the wall. The smoke
of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.
This is plenty. This is more than enough.
