Poetic Omissions in Geoffrey Hill's Most Recent Sequences
Merle E. Brown
Breaks, gaps, disjunctures have been important in Geoffrey Hill's poetry almost from the start, but they are most striking three recent sequences, Songbook of Sebastian Arrurruz (which concludes King Log, 1968), Mercian Hymns (1971), and Lachrimae (Agenda, Winter-Spring, 1975). The texts these sequences themselves so simple as to make one question momentarily whether finest poet England is not trying imitate its popular, Philip Larkin. But no, difference extreme ever. Hill achieves simpleness his text a way that charges one's sense it with concentrated depth intensity; what he omits, which goes unsaid, evoked part experience much precision given sees hears; two interdependent each grows if other were necessary soil. power increases awareness exactly has omitted increases. They hoard destructions. Larkin's very different. He excludes complications before begins. If reader at all aware missing poems, an himself brings them. simplicity same leads Richard Kuhns treat Wittgenstein's Tractatus work art likens Val6ry. Wittgenstein decides start leave out everything except case, facts, world. God, self, mystical on principle bounds. So, says,
Contemporary Literature