Without Title
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Without Title is a book of poems by Geoffrey Hill. It was published by Penguin in 2006 (ISBN 0-14-102025-3).
[edit] Critical reception
As with earlier work, Without Title was received as poetry that "makes few concessions"[1], "complex at best... dauntingly impenetrable at worst,"[2] and as being "musically assured and resonant"[1]. It was welcomed as a partial return to "the appreciation of a certain gnarled, natural beauty"[3] and it was seen that it "escapes the shortcomings of Hill's recent work".[4] Poet Alan Brownjohn identified the following themes: "'mourning', 'unfruition', 'misconception'"[5]
The central section — 21 25-line "Pindarics after Cesare Pavese" — drew particular attention; Brownjohn seeing as "Hill at his most complex and unapproachable"[5], but Michael Schmidt classing it as "among Hill's most sustained meditations".[1] Clive Wilmer considered that the sequence "becomes, at times, tediously self-referential"[4]
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ a b c Michael Schmidt in The Independent, 17 February 2006 [1]
- ^ Tim Martin in The Independent on Sunday, 5 February 2006 [2]
- ^ Nicholas Lezard, in The Guardian, 21 January 2006 [3]
- ^ a b Clive Wilmer in New Statesman, 27 February 2006 [4]
- ^ a b Alan Brownjohn, in The Sunday Times, 19 February 2006 [5]
