Geoffrey hill and the art of difficult poetry

Part 2

Last week, in discussing the poetry of Geoffrey Hill I made the point that many literary critics find his poetry to be difficult. I also made the observation that there is an important distinction to be made between difficulty and obscurity. Difficulty can be either positive or negative depending on the context in, and the circumstances under which it finds articulation. Obscurity, on the contrary, is almost always negative signifying a failure on the part of the poet due to a complex of variables ranging from incompetence to showiness.

Obscure poems have submitted themselves to an unbending intransigence with the result that they become intractable to the grasping mind. The idea of difficulty is based on a highly subjective valuation. What one reader may find to be difficult could be seen as an easy to understand and highly accessible poem by another. Accessibility and difficulty are for the most part in the eye of the beholder. Factors relating to the educational background, taste, interests, familiarity with literature and literary traditions, the willingness to be proactive participant in the poetic experience have a bearing on the assessment of difficulty of poetry.

There may be times when difficulty of a poem may appear as if the poet is sticking out his tongue at the reader. However, in most instances, difficulty arises out of genuine and deeply felt concerns. Difficulty could be of different types – lexical, syntactic, allusive, figural, formal, stylistic, and so on. Ultimately, one has to judge difficulty in poetry in terms of its thematic and representational context.

Clearly, Geoffrey Hill is a difficult poet. But then he has his own reasons why his poems are the way there are and not otherwise. In order to understand this issue in its true complexity we have to pay close attention to the themes, content, style, forms, techniques and vision found in his poetry. In the final analysis his perceived difficulty arises from his densely-wrought poetic fabric that demands the willing participation of an alert reader. Hence we need to pay close attention to the structures of his preferred craft.

Geoffrey Hill himself as commented on the idea of difficulty in poetry. In a statement that might not command universal assent, he argues that difficulty can be parsed as a way of democratizing poetry. As he observed, ‘difficult poetry is the most democratic because you are doing your audience the honor of supposing that they are intelligent human beings. If you write as if you have to placate or in a way entice their lack of interest then I think you are making condescending assumptions about people.’ And the eminent American poet, and once Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, said that difficulty is important for art. Similarly, another distinguished American poet Howard Nemerov said that, ‘It is when poetry becomes altogether too easy, too accessible, down to a few derivative formulae and caters to low tastes and lazy minds – it is then that art is in danger.’ Some might legitimately argue that this is indeed an unacceptably elitist line of thinking.

Some commentators have chosen to go even further. For example Vernon Shetley in his book Death of Poetry: Poet and Audience in Contemporary America remarked that, ‘only by increasing the level of intellectual challenge it offers can poetry once again make itself a vital part of intellectual culture.’ Not everyone, surely, could agree with this approach to complexity of poetry. Some would argue that the idea of communication, of reaching the reader is a cardinal imperative of poetry and one of the primary obligations of a poet. It is evident, then, that there are a broad range of approaches to what Yeats once referred to as ’the fascination of what’s difficult.’

The difficulty that characterizes much of Geoffrey Hill’s poetry can be understood a different levels of poetic analysis. Let us first consider a poem by him – this is titled sorrel

Memory worsening – let it go as rain
streams on half-visible clatter of the wind
lapsing and rising
that clouds the pond’s green mistletoe of spawn
seeps among nettlebeds and rust-brown sorrel
perpetual ivy burrowed by weak light
makes carved shapes crumble: the ill-weathering stone
salvation’s troth-plight, plumed, of the elect

In this poem, which is representative of Hill’s work in general, one can identify a number of features that we have now come to associate with his poetry. The compactness of the poem, the compressed nature of the poetic economy, and elevated diction are among them. The way he invests the phenomenal world with a metaphysical tint is largely attributable to his acuity of vision and density of linguistic expression.

Let us consider another poem, a poem consisting of two sonnets, by Geoffrey Hill; this is even more difficult than the previous example. This is the first sonnet in his two sonnet poem Annunciations, which is a widely discussed composition. The term annunciation which means proclamation has obvious Biblical overtones.

The Word has been abroad, it is back, with a tanned look
From its subsistence in the stiffening-mire
Cleansing has become killing, the reward
Touchable, overt, clean to the touch.
Now at a distance from the steam of beasts
The loathly necking and fat shook spawn
(Each specimen-jar fed with delicate spawn)
The searchers with the curers sit at meat
And are satisfied. Such precious things put down
And the flesh eased through turbulence of the soul
Purples itself; each eye squats full and mild
Where all who attend to fiddle or to harp
For betterment, flavor their decent mouths
With goblets of the sweetest sacrifice.

This is a difficult poem; its verbal texture is dense and intricate. This sonnet deals with the disparity between the inspired words of poets and the physicality of language. The interplay of the material and the spiritual, whether in the sphere of faith or poetic creation, is a theme that is close to Hill’s heart. The Word in capital letters has a special significance for him; it signals a transcendental and redemptive power of poetry.

There is an interesting interplay between sound and sense, materiality and imagination, earthliness and transcendence in the poem that serves to give greater definition to the poet’s chosen theme. The elevated and often surprising diction and the intricately woven fabric of the poem add to the density of meaning inviting the closest attention of the reader. Let us consider the second sonnet which has as its theme that of love.

O love, subject of the mere diurnal grind
Forever being pledged to be redeemed
Expose yourself for charity; be assured
The body is but husk and excrement.
Enter the death according to the law,
O visited women, possessed sons. Foreign lusts
Infringe our restraint; the changeable
Soldiery have their goings-out and comings-in
Dying in abundance.

Geoffrey Hill’s poems for the most part are difficult for a variety of reasons. He has sought to create a poetic world that is on the verge of self-transformation, bent on remaking itself in the very process of writing it into existence.

The idea of poetry as a process of creating poetry is central to his literary credo. His retreat from simplicity is not a gimmick or an ostentatious display of virtuosity but a genuine attempt to confront the complexities of poetry-making. One can discern many functions performed by difficulty in Hill’s poetry. First, his themes dealing with history, cultural memory, violence, forgiveness, spirituality make for difficulties of apprehension.

These are complex themes, and Geoffrey Hill has never shrunk from exploring them in all their complexity and ramifications. Second, his distinct use of language merits close study as uncovering a facet of his perceived difficulty. Hill is interested in the shape, weigh, color, moving force of words. He is committed to removing the sludge acquired by language through daily use; many of his poems are written against the descending night of linguistic mediocrity.

Geoffrey Hill’s verbal innovativeness, which constitutes a vital aspect of his poetic achievement, is intimately linked to difficulty. Commenting on Mallarme’s difficult poetry George Steiner made the following assessment.’ He will reanimate lexical and grammatical resources that have fallen out of use. He will melt and inflect words into neological shapes. He will labor to undermine through distortion, through hyperbolic augment, through elision and displacement, the banal and constricting determinations of ordinary public syntax.’

This same comment, I submit, can be usefully applied to Geoffrey Hill. One of the principal delights and challenges provided by Hill’ in his poetry is his deep and abiding preoccupation with the intransigence of language. He uses words to go beyond words; he is simultaneously disturbed and reassured by the power of language.

Third, a sense of complexity arises in Hill’s poetry as a consequence of his meticulous internal organization of his poetic texts. This is a predominant feature of his poetic craft. Even a comma, in his poetry, can be extremely important in guiding its meaning. Let us consider the following two lines

To dispense, with justice; to dispense with justice

The absence of the comma between the two words ‘dispense’ and’ with’ has the effect of changing the meaning from providing to disregarding justice. In other words, it will lead to a reversal of meaning. Hill has at times written on the composition of some of his poems; these essays manifest his meticulousness in organizing words in his poetry. Fourth, there is a complex relation in Geoffrey Hill’s writings between emotions, sensations and ideas. In most of his poems he advances a poetic argument of varying complexity. This argument is a result of the interaction among emotions, sensations and ideas. Very often in his poetry emotion assumes the role of a reasoning agent. This interesting feature, too, serves to deepen the complexity of Hill’s poetry. Let us consider the following poem; it deals with the plight of an imprisoned man

Some days a shadow through
The high window shares my
Prison. I watch a slug
Scale the glinting pit-side
Of its own slime. The cries
As they come are mine; then
God’s; my justice, wound, love,
Derisive light, bread, filth.

To lie here in my strange
Flesh while glutted torment
Sleeps, stained with its prompt food
Is a joy past all care
Of the world, for a time
But we are commanded
To rise, when, in silence
I would compose my voice

Here the subtler effects of the poem are secured through the intersections of emotion, sensation and idea. For Hill, emotions and sensations are as demanding as complex ideas.

Fourth, Hill’s poetry is invariably drawn towards a metaphysical vision. Whether the subject is history or violence or love, his instincts are towards a metaphysical framing of it as the complexities of Being are of paramount importance to him. He is constantly seeking to alter our modes of awareness and urge consciousness to turn upon itself.

Fifth, Geoffrey Hill’s poetry is marked by a semantic uncertainty, a willed ambiguity that has the effect of deepening the perceived complexity of his compositions. There is nothing that generates verbal difficulty as the inability to pin down the meaning unambiguously. This semantic uncertainty springs from the activation of many layers of meaning in his poetic locutions. Sixth, the idea of inter-textuality, detectable echoes of earlier poets, is a vital part of Hill’s poetic project.

This again serves to invest his poetry with another layer of difficulty. This is, of course, a trait that Hill shares with many other distinguished poets. For example, T.S. Eliot in The Wasteland puts in play echoes from the western and eastern literary and spiritual traditions. Inter-textuality is one way in which Geoffrey Hill contrives to strengthen his contexts of authority in his poems.

Seventh, Hill as a poet is deeply interested in the production of complex verbal patterns. These complex patterns emerge from the inter-threading of diverse verbal registers. A reader, if he or she is to make greater sense of the poem in question, has to decode these patterns. They demand a mental adjustment, a conceptual re-orientation on the part of the reader. Malcolm Bowie in discussing the difficult poetry of Mallarme observes that, ‘productive reading entails that patterns be made and willingly broken, tested and revised or discarded. The frame of mind essential to the reader of modern poetry is that of an experimentalist for whom speculation and hypotheses proceed continuously and for whom certainty is the remotest and least practical of goals’.

Eighth, Geoffrey Hill’s poems need to be regarded not as closed texts but open texts; they are works in progress. Any ingenious reader, through his or her imaginative efforts, can add to the meaning and value of a given poem and thereby strengthen its being as an open text. The poetic discourse that emerges from his work is characterized by non-linearity and a complex circulation of energy. This is connected to the idea of the open-text that I referred to in the earlier sentence. ..

All these features that make for difficulty are an essential component of Geoffrey Hill’s poetic philosophy. These features also demand the close and the active participation of the reader. It is evident that his poetry is not intended for the lazy reader or one that who is unwilling to shake off mental indolence. The very multi-dimensionality of his poetic idiom ensures this. Let us examine a poem that illustrates many of the features that I have been discussing so far. It is the first poem in Three Baroque Meditations.

Do words make up majesty
Of man, and his justice
Between the stones and the void/

How they watch us, the demons
Plugging their dumb wounds1 when
Exorcized they shrivel yet thrive

An owl plunges to its tryst
With a field-mouse in the sharp night
My fire squeals and lies still

Minerva, receives this had
Praise; I speak well of death
I confess to the priest in me

I am shadowed by the wise bird
Of necessity, the lithe
Paradigm Sleep-and-Kill.

T.S. Eliot in his essay The Use of Poetry and Use of Criticism makes an important observation on difficulty in poetry, no doubt, drawing on his long experience as an outstanding writer and reader of poetry. He said that, ‘the difficulty of poetry (and modern poetry is supposed to be difficult) may be due to one of several reasons. First, there may be personal causes which make it impossible for a poet to express himself in a way but an obscure way; while this may be regrettable, we should be glad, I think, that the man has been able to express himself at all.

Or difficulty may be due just to novelty; we know the ridicule accorded in turn to Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, Tennyson and browning – but must remark that browning was the first to be called difficult; hostile critics of the earlier poets found them difficult, but called them sill. Or difficulty may be caused by the reader’s having been told, or having suggested to himself, that the poem is going to prove difficult. The ordinary reader, when warned against the obscurity of a poem is apt to be thrown into a state of consternation very unfavorable to poetic receptivity.’

What Eliot says about the difficulty of poetry, based on his own experience as a distinguished poet and critic, has a bearing on the difficulty of Geoffrey Hill’s work as well. It is, unfortunate however that Eliot does not draw a distinction between difficulty of poetry and obscurity of poetry. Such a distinction, it seems to me, serves to bring a greater measure of clarity to our discussions of this vexed topic. The opposite of difficulty is accessibility.

Commenting in accessibility, Geoffrey Hill in an essay suggestively titled The Weight of the Word, states that,’ Questions of accessibility turn upon matters of context. In both sacred and secular writings we may receive, at any instance, a sense of things inaccessible suddenly made accessible, where grammar and desire are miraculously one’. Indeed the conjoining of grammar and desire makes for comprehensive legibility.

As a way of further exploring the idea of difficulty of Geoffrey Hill’s poetry, I wish to introduce into our discussion the name of Giorgio Agamben and his concept of potentialities. To the best of my knowledge, no one has made a connection between difficulty of poetry and Agamben’s concept. For some, this might seem too much of a stretch and unwarranted interpretive leap. However, it is my considered judgment that there is a case to be made for this conjunction. It seems to me that Agamben’s concept of potentiality has a direct bearing on the understanding of difficulty id poetry.

The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (1942-) has emerged as a formidable contemporary thinker. His name is mentioned in the same breath as those of Derrida, Foucault, Barthes, Lacan, Ranciere, Badiou etc. He has written on a broad range of topics and disciplines that include classical and modern philosophy, literature, cinema, holocaust literature, biblical exegesis, medieval literature, world politics, art and aesthetics.

However, there is a unity to his seemingly diverse writings; he is fundamentally interested in the theme of human beings as linguistic beings. For him, language is central to being; therefore it becomes the object of philosophy. Language is shaped and manipulated by those in power and hence it becomes the object of political theory; language is both the instrument and subject of creative literature and consequently it becomes the object of literary study. The constitutive role of language in human affairs is central to Agamben’s thought.

One of the pivotal formulations of Agamben is that of potentiality. This informs much of his thinking ranging from literature to politics. Aristotle discusses at length the distinction between potentiality and actuality in his Metaphysics XI. Agamben takes this distinction and carries it forward in a way that Aristotle did not. He sees potentiality as the principle that human beings have the potential to perform something; whether they do it or not is another matter. For Agamben, the potentiality not to do something is as significant as the potentiality to do something.

As he says, ‘Other living beings are capable only of their specific potentiality; they can only do this or that. But human beings are the animals who are capable of their own impotentiality.’ It is Agamben’s conviction that ‘the genuinely philosophical element in any work, be it a work of art, one of science, one of thought, is its capacity for development.’

On another occasion, he proclaimed that, ‘the most demanding and inescapable experience possible; the experience of potentiality.’ It is indeed this experience that is offered to the reader by his labors to complete the work. In other words, according to Agamben, works of literature are almost always incomplete, and they are brought to completion by the efforts of the reader .One aspect of Geoffrey Hill’s difficulty resides in this imperative for completion – something that is vitally connected to the very being of a work, that of potentiality.

As I stated earlier, Hill’s poetry is characterized by its open-endedness, multi-dimensionality, obsession with language, the agonistic interplay between the syntactic system and the energies of the unconscious, invitation to multiple readings.

All these, no doubt, make for difficulty. At the same time, they feed into the notion that his works are incomplete in the sense that Agamben uses the tem and it is up to readers to bring them to completion by dint of their imagination and reading powers. It is here that the idea of potentiality begins to exercise its interpretive dominion. The incomplete nature of a poem suggests that with each imaginative reading, it has the capacity to re-create itself afresh.