At one level, this book
seeks a certain density of language, far more taut & compact than most
poets operating within the conservative tradition of the British Isles . In that sense, it’s
closest kin among Hill’s peers might be Paul Muldoon, like Hill a full-time
teacher in the U.S. Still, Hill’s condensare is quite a bit looser than many folks on
this side of the pond, from Zukofsky to Bök. Rather, Speech! Speech! gestures at density, stuffing the text with
CAPITALS, foreign languages, néédless accents,
feigned dialect & odd slices of vertical punctuation (“|”) to arrive at a sort of huff-&-puff
dramatic monolog, with an eye to Berryman & an ear towards Hopkins:
Fine
figure of a man, say it. Try
thís for size. Say it | why are we waiting?
Get
stuck in. Hurdy-gurdy the starter
handle
to make backfire. Call monthlies
double-strength stale fleurs du mal. Too
close
for
comfort | say it, Herr Präsident, weep
lubricant
and brimstone, wipe yo’ smile.
COMPETITIVE
DEVALUATION – a great find
wasted
on pleasantries of intermission.
Say
it: licence to silence: say it: me
Tarzan,
you | diva of multiple choice,
rode
proud on oúr arousal-cárrousel.
There is not one single
device here that wasn’t used in, say, The
Cantos, so the question here cannot be one of breaking new ground.
Content-wise, any Poetry Project workshop student who couldn’t comment more
succinctly on Mr. Clinton’s personal foibles would stand ashamed – at twelve
lines, Hill’s text is seriously bloated. Underneath its gaudy exterior,
individual lines range between nine & twelve syllables, generally yielding
(if you buy all those accents) ye olde five-foot
meter, but at least not with tub-thumping regularity in feet. Hill’s dramatic
mode throughout is closer to Mauberly than to
the later Pound. It seems patently evident that this work, both in this section
& throughout the volume, wants to appear far more Modern than Hill himself
is willing to go. With an apocalyptic vision of life right out of The Waste Land , Speech!
Speech! is Modern with a capital M. Which is
to say that it is not at all contemporary.
The
inherent conflict in a conservative poet trying to write as a Modern led to
some great results in Hart Crane’s The
Bridge. Seven plus decades
later, it has the feel of an historic re-enactment, the way modernism might be
carried out by something like Civil War buffs on a Sunday afternoon. It’s not
unlike the Bloomsday readings of Ulysses that have become an annual literary sport in several cities
. . . except that Joyce is the real deal, while Speech! Speech! is merely aggressively faux.
Still, there is both an ear
& a wit here. The last three lines are lovely even with the Christmas-tree
ornamentation of accent & punctuation. And there are moments in the first
nine lines where the over-the-top stylistics are sort of fun. If Hill could
just be read without the critical trappings that have been appended to this
minor art, he might be quite enjoyable. That, alas, is an insurmountable if . .
. .
Hill himself doesn’t seem so
full of pretense. After all, his models here are decidedly minor. Hill would be
far better served by his advocates if they would not go about declaring him
“indisputably the best living poet in English and perhaps in the world” (Peter
Levi), “The strongest British poet now alive” (Harold Bloom), “the best English
poet of the twentieth century” (Don ald
Hall) or “the finest British poet of our
time” (John Hollander). Hall, at least, should know better.
What pathology inscribes
such hubris? Do these critics think that by making such sweepingly ridiculous
claims that they can abolish the actual history of British literature over the
past 100 years, let alone that of the rest of the English speaking world,? Are
they actually ignorant of the work of Basil Bunting, Jeremy Prynne, Tom Raworth , Allen Fisher, Lee Harwood, Ian Hamilton Finlay or Hugh MacDiarmid?
They’ve never heard of Samuel Beckett or William Butler Yeats? Against the drab
backdrop of the conservative tradition in British literature, the likes of
Larkin & Hughes, Hill can be said to shine, unquestionably, although I
think you could make a good argument that Auden & Thom Gunn offer
considerably more in the way of substance. But that tradition doesn’t represent
even one third of British literature and the “see no contemporary / hear no
contemporary / speak no contemporary” monkeys of canonic Establishmentarianism
not only commit critical malpractice when they pretend otherwise, they also do
serious damage to the very person whose poetry they claim to support. Poor
Geoffrey Hill!