Description
Book SynopsisBroken Hierarchies collects twenty books of poems by Geoffrey Hill, written over sixty years, and presents them in their definitive form. Four of these books (Ludo, Expostulations on the Volcano, Liber Illustrium Virorum, and Al Tempo de'' Tremuoti) have never before appeared in print, and three of them (Hymns to Our Lady of Chartres, Pindarics, and Clavics) have been greatly revised and expanded.
Trade ReviewVivid clarity ... intense lyric beauty. This is work of the first importance. * Paul Batchelor, Book of the Year 2014, Times Literary Supplement *
The scale and consistency of this volume, meticulously edited by Kenneth Haynes, and handsomely, if rather minutely, set out, with plenty of white space around poems and a jacket bearing an image from Kokoschka, give it a monumental air ... At the vital, latter end of the book there are huge achievements and intricate exercises, experimental in their rigour. Hill's scraggy apple tree is indeed an emblem of his stupendous late-spring flowering. * John Kerrigan, Times Literary Supplement *
Broken Hierarchies possesses a magisterial intellectual sweep and sense of literary high ambition which is perhaps unique in contemporary English poetry. * Terry Kelly, London Magazine *
Hill has for 40-odd years kept his language as close-textured, tough, knotted and lyrical as poetry can be. If he makes old Eliot seem by comparison an easy read it is not for mere show; these poems are as beautiful, hard, compressed and granular as the rocks and stones and trees from which they are made. * Fred Inglis, The Times Higher Education Supplement *
If the phrase "greatest living poet in the English language" has any meaning, then we should use it to describe Hill. * Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian *
He can rival the best. * Jeremy Noel-Tod, The Sunday Times *
Table of ContentsFOR THE UNFALLEN (1959); KING LOG (1968); MERCIAN HYMNS (1971); TENEBRAE (1978); THE MYSTERY OF THE CHARITY OF CHARLES PEGUY (1983); HYMNS TO OUR LADY OF CHARTRES (1982 2012); CANAAN (1996); THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE (1998); SPEECH! SPEECH! (2000); THE ORCHARDS OF SYON (2002); SCENES FROM COMUS (2005); WITHOUT TITLE (2006); PINDARICS (2005 2012); A TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER (2007); LUDO (2011); THE DAYBOOKS (2007 2012)
