'Over 32 poems Geoffrey Hill traces an elegiac sequence for William Lawes and his music, intermingling the historical events around his death with flashes of the everyday. The result is a collection that delights in eccentric incongruities. Ben Jonson will appear a line after a popular instant coffee blend has been mentioned, Dante will be found next to a mime artist, Marcel Marceau, and Lawes himself figures auditioning for Ronnie Scott. Mr Hill actively seeks out such juxtapositions. He will audaciously rhyme "haruspex", an Etruscan soothsayer who saw prophecies in the entrails of victims, with "bad sex", his poetry...Read more
'Over 32 poems Geoffrey Hill traces an elegiac sequence for William Lawes and his music, intermingling the historical events around his death with flashes of the everyday. The result is a collection that delights in eccentric incongruities. Ben Jonson will appear a line after a popular instant coffee blend has been mentioned, Dante will be found next to a mime artist, Marcel Marceau, and Lawes himself figures auditioning for Ronnie Scott. Mr Hill actively seeks out such juxtapositions. He will audaciously rhyme "haruspex", an Etruscan soothsayer who saw prophecies in the entrails of victims, with "bad sex", his poetry delighting in "a dissonance to make them wince". Yet, as Mr Hill writes, when speaking of Lawes's tendency to jar different musical themes, "the grace of music is its dissonance." This discordance is part of his wider belief in the public nature of poetry. Refusing to be a "light entertainer" like the hypocrites in Dante's inferno, Mr Hill presents a difficult world as he sees it. His gift lies in making such difficulty momentarily understood.' THE ECONOMIST
- ISBN10 1907587721
- ISBN13 9781907587726
- Publish Date 30 November 2013 (first published 22 March 2011)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Enitharmon Press
- Edition 2nd Second Edition, Second ed.
- Format Paperback
- Pages 42
- Language English