Hill, Geoffrey (Vol. 8) - Hill, Geoffrey 1932–
Hill, Geoffrey 1932–
Winner of the Gregory Award for Poetry in 1961, Hill, a first-rate English poet, belongs to no particular "school" or movement. In some respects a traditionalist, Hill's preoccupation has been with eternal themes: war, death, and human suffering. (See also CLC, Vol. 5.)
Hill is, in the judgment of some of us, the best poet now writing in England (and I am not sure that I should except Philip Larkin). "Somewhere Is Such a Kingdom" comprises his three books, "For the Unfallen" (1959), "King Log" (1968) and "Mercian Hymns" (1971), a sequence of extraordinary prose-poems, humorous and ursine, which burgeon from the imaginative meeting of the legendary King Offa from the 8th century with a 20th century childhood. Many of Hill's poems are deep and bitter doubtings as to whether the imaginative life can't too easily become an indulgence in factitious high concern. There are "Ovid in the Third Reich" and "September Song," with...
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