
Geoffrey Hill and the ends of poetry
The idea of the end is an essential motivic force in the poetry of Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016). This book shows that Hill’s poems are characteristically ‘end-directed’. They tend towards consummations of all kinds: from the marriages of meanings in puns, or of words in repeating figures and rhymes, to syntactical and formal finalities. The recognition of failure to reach such ends provides its own i...
The idea of the end is an essential motivic force in the poetry of Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016). This book shows that Hill’s poems are characteristically ‘end-directed’. They tend towards consummations of all kinds: from the marriages of meanings in puns, or of words in repeating figures and rhymes, to syntactical and formal finalities. The recognition of failure to reach such ends provides its own i...