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Geoffrey Hill
27 quotes
“The idea that you write to express yourself seems to me revolting. The idea that you write to glorify or to make glorious the art of expressiveness seems to me spot on.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To say a poet is to be condemned or inaccessible because she invokes some fields of vision which we have difficulty in grasping; this seems to me a crass kind of bullying.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I try to make a distinction between enjoyment and joy. You are only prepared to enjoy what you already have a taste for; wheras joy is shocking and surprising.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I contrast hierarchy with hegemony , the juxtaposition of the real & surreal”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Sameer Rahim, 'Poetry as History', Telegraph Review, 14 December 2013.
“We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We’re difficult to ourselves, we’re difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think art has a right—not an obligation—to be difficult if it wishes. And, since people generally go on from this to talk about elitism versus democracy, I would add that genuinely difficult art is truly democratic.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea that the intellect is somehow alien to sensuousness, or vice versa, is one that I have never been able to connect with. I can accept that it is a prevalent belief, but it seems to me, nonetheless, a false notion.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think intelligence has a kind of range of sense and allows us to contemplate the coexistence of the conceptual aspect of thought and the emotional aspect of thought as ideally wedded, troth-plight, and the circumstances in which this troth-plight can be effected are to be found in the medium of language itself.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think men and women who write poetry or write music or paint are finally responsible for what they do. They are entitled to praise for any success they achieve and they should not complain of just criticism.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Self-astonishment is achieved when, by some process I can't fathom, common words are moved, or move themselves, into clusters of meaning so intense that they seem to stand up from the page, three-dimensional almost.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is to be hoped—I mean, I hope—that the poetry I have been writing since 1992 squares up to, takes the measure of, weighs up, the violent evasions and stock affronts of the oligarchy of fraud. I don't, even so, write poems to be polemical; I write to create a being of beautiful energy.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For this creating to take place (as it does from time to time) words have to be accepted as heirs of their forebears, as we are of ours. And in each case, what exists is often only a bankrupt inheritance; or the hinterlands of the unspoken.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An achieved poem is always beautiful in its own way, though such a way will many times strike people as harsh and repellent.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Did Péguy kill Juarés? Did he incite”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy,”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Charles Péguy, stubborn rancours and mishaps and all, is one of the great souls, one of the great prophetic intelligences of the 20th century.I offer my poem as my homage to the triumph of his 'defeat'.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notes on The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy, in Collected Poems Penguin Books 1985
“In memory of those things these words were born.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Author note to his Collected Poems 1985.
“I have learned one thing: not to look down Too much upon the damned.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The years will not answer for what they have done, that much is certain. There is no shaking them, we might have foreseen this but refused.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One cannot lose what one has not possessed." So much for that abrasive gem. I can lose what I want. I want you.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Or say it is Pentecost: the hawthorn-tree, set with coagulate magnified flowers of may, blooms in a haze of light; old chalk-pits brim with seminal verdue from the roots of time. Landscape is like revelation; it is both singular crystal and the remotest things. Cloud-shadows of seasons revisit the earth, odourless myrrh bourne by the wandering kings.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Primroses; salutations; the miry skull of a half-eaten ram; vicious wounds in earth opening. What seraphs are afoot.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I write to astonish myself”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wish I understood myself more clearly or less well.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Shakespeare clearly heard many voices. No secret: voicing means hearing, at a price a gift”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“September fattens on vines. Roses flake from the wall. The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus I grind to conclusion.”
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source