Geoffrey Hill Quotes
1932–2016 England
Sir Geoffrey William Hill (18 June 1932 - 30 June 2016) was an English poet and is Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford.
Random Geoffrey Hill quote
20 quotes
And, since people generally go on from this to talk about elitism versus democracy, I would add that genuinely difficult art is truly democratic.
In memory of those things these words were born.
An achieved poem is always beautiful in its own way, though such a way will many times strike people as harsh and repellent.
I have learned one thing: not to look down
Too much upon the damned.
I wish I understood myself
more clearly or less well.
Primroses; salutations; the miry skull
of a half-eaten ram; vicious wounds in earth
opening. What seraphs are afoot.
The years will not
answer for what they have done, that much is
certain. There is no shaking them, we
might have foreseen this but refused.
September fattens on vines. Roses
flake from the wall. The smoke
of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.
Shakespeare
clearly heard many voices. No secret:
voicing means hearing, at a price a gift
"One cannot lose what one has not possessed."
So much for that abrasive gem.
I can lose what I want. I want you.
I contrast hierarchy with hegemony , the juxtaposition of the real & surreal
Charles Péguy, stubborn rancours and mishaps and all, is one of the great souls, one of the great prophetic intelligences of the 20th century.I offer my poem as my homage to the triumph of his 'defeat'.
Thus I grind to conclusion.
Did Péguy kill Juarés? Did he incite
The assassin? Must men stand by what they write
As by their camp-beds or their weaponry
Or shell-shocked comrades while they sag and cry?
I try to make a distinction between enjoyment and joy. You are only prepared to enjoy what you already have a taste for; wheras joy is shocking and surprising.
Self-astonishment is achieved when, by some process I can't fathom, common words are moved, or move themselves, into clusters of meaning so intense that they seem to stand up from the page, three-dimensional almost.
The idea that you write to express yourself seems to me revolting. The idea that you write to glorify or to make glorious the art of expressiveness seems to me spot on.
For this creating to take place (as it does from time to time) words have to be accepted as heirs of their forebears, as we are of ours. And in each case, what exists is often only a bankrupt inheritance; or the hinterlands of the unspoken.
The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy
Or say it is Pentecost: the hawthorn-tree,
set with coagulate magnified flowers of may,
blooms in a haze of light; old chalk-pits brim
with seminal verdue from the roots of time.
Landscape is like revelation; it is both
singular crystal and the remotest things.
Cloud-shadows of seasons revisit the earth,
odourless myrrh bourne by the wandering kings.