- Paperback: 96 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (5 Sep 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0141009918
- ISBN-13: 978-0141009919
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 13.4 x 0.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 536,013 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In the words of the magazine Poetry Review, a kind of late fury has gripped Geoffrey Hill in recent years after a decade's silence, with CANAAN (1996), THE LOVE TRIUMPH (1998), SPEECH! SPEECH! (2001) - all published in Penguin - and now this new volume. All these books are driven by a profound quarrel with the modern world. This new book consists of 72 numbered poems, each of 24 lines. Together they make up a kind of Dantean eclogue in which the landscape of Hill's youth - rural Worcestershire - offers a glimpse of paradise in the midst of the modern world. This is a major poet writing serious, beautiful poetry.
About the Author
Geoffrey Hill was born in Bromsgrove, Worcs, in 1932, the son of a local policeman. He taught for many years at the Universities of Leeds and Cambridge, but moved to the USA in 1988 and is currently Professor of Literature and Religion at the University of Boston. He is widely regarded as one of our greatest poets.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The poetry of Geoffrey Hill is not accessible to those who are not willing to commit to the concentrated reading it requires. Once over the initial hurdle, however,it becomes an unshiftable part of your consciousness. Rich, dense, allusive - all of these things, yes; but the wisdom and learning is used not for its own sake but to grasp the essence of the unnameable, the senses in ourselves most close and essential to our being. A journey such as this is arduous but rewarding, in ways that are more easily felt than expressed. These ways are fundamental, lasting, life-enriching.
Orchards of Syon is about Grace. You may not know what that is, or be dubious of its relevance to you. I believe effort with this text shows you what it is through feeling, as opposed to learning. Indeed the ultimate value of this poetry for me is its down to earth, everyday relevance.
Orchards of Syon is about Grace. You may not know what that is, or be dubious of its relevance to you. I believe effort with this text shows you what it is through feeling, as opposed to learning. Indeed the ultimate value of this poetry for me is its down to earth, everyday relevance.
3 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Reviewers tend to use word such as 'unsettling', masterful', 'genius' and 'morality' when writing about Geoffrey Hill's books. I prefer to use words such as 'bollocks' and 'tosh'.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Latest installment from the maestro of contemporary verse
25 Mar 2003
Format:Hardcover
A meditation on immortality, memory, and poetry: all this should be familiar to readers of Geoffrey Hill's poetry. Orchards is the third book-long poem Hill has produced in the past five years, and, even more so than the first two, must be read in conjunction with his earlier work to be fully appreciated and understood. (First time readers of Hill would be better advised to turn to his "New and Collected Poems," or "The Triumph of Love" for a starting point).
Once again (the other time was in "Speech! Speech!") Hill forgoes the sweeping lyricism of "The Triumph of Love" in favor of a focus on pitch rather than tone (think of Hopkins). At times, awkward, flailing about, reaching and overreaching, or falling short, "The Orchards of Syon" nevertheless achieves at moments a poignancy and precision that rewards close (very close) readings.
Hill was born in 1932 in England, but now teaches at Boston University; his topics are 16th/17th c. English poetry, but also Hopkins and 20th century poetry, and he is "Professor of Religion and Literature". Unsurprisingly then, this poem delves into the question of Augustine vs Pelagius; Bradwardine vs Ockham, that is to say, divine will vs human "free" will.
Beware, this is dense stuff, and will require time and effort to be unpacked, unravelled, understood. It is a poem to be read over years, not days or months. As Hill writes in section VIII:
The curlew's pitch distracts us from her nest.
But: end this for all in some shape other
than vexed bafflement; each triangular
wall-cope cladded with tight moss
springy as a terrier's pelt, buttonhole
emerald polypodae, sprung tremblers
within the burring air of the fell?
Amen to that, I say.
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