Thanks for this illuminating dissection of the Pindaricity (or otherwise) of Hill’s Pindarics. I like quite a lot of late Hill, but the sequences that seems primarily driven by his ability to riff on complex formal frames seem the thinnest to me. Tellingly, I think, there’s nothing you could compare them to in Eliot, Pound or Larkin (to go back to the canon cited in your footnote) — all poets who, differently, had a strong feeling for poetry as an impulse that finds the form for its occasion, rather than the other way around.
Thanks Jeremy. Like a lot of people I think I have reservations about the later Hill as a whole. Unlike you, I think I have found the most highly formal sequences -- the odes, the Pindarics and the "Clavics" -- the most rewarding so far, but that might just be that these are the ones I've spent most time with. All the same, I agree with you that there's something "thin" (good word) here -- and evasive -- despite the extravagant "thickness" (density, difficulty) of the language. I agree that what he is doing in these late formal sequences is not like Pound, Eliot or Larkin, this is a great and v. helpful observation. It is obviously, however, like quite a lot of ancient, medieval or early modern poets who worked intensively in a single form, or a series of very closely related ones. I suppose I find the poetic "idea" -- create or resurrect a form and then teach your readers how to read it -- engaging, even if I'm not sure whether in these cases it really succeeds. I think he is also a v. interesting point of comparison to e.g. Sisson who also invented many forms, but tended to write just a few of each, and then spread them around in collections, so it is much less obvious.
That is interesting, and I will look again at Sisson with that knowledge... There are a lot of poets I like who tend to one kind of form, but I never felt convinced that Hill was really one of them. This, though, helps me to see why I would say the first and last books of his late work -- The Triumph of Love and The Book of Baruch -- are the best: in each one, he takes a loose frame for a long poem, and improvises sections freely within it -- a method he discovered in Mercian Hymns, which stands out among the early work as a discovery. I also like Scenes from Comus, which has contrasting stanza forms, and A Treatise of Civil Power, which is individual poems on a theme. Clavics I'm afraid left me cold!
Thanks for your original query! I still think Hill is almost the opposite of Pindaric in spirit, but that in itself is interesting I suppose. I realise I didn't attempt to speculate on why he chose this form, but my guess would be that at root the choice had a lot more to do with Cowley than with Pindar himself.
Thanks, Fascinating. Very helpful. Nevertheless, I have tried and tried to like, enjoy, understand (in that order!) Hill's poetry over the years (and there are one or two poems), but these late books, I feel he talking to himself, and constructing, with that hard labour (laborious?) you mention, a poetic diction, "poetry". The one I like best is where he suddenly goes plainer, more direct, in A Treatise of Civil Power.
I think a lot of people feel the same Martin and indeed I suspect that is partly the reason for the reserved engagement from readers and critics with the later Hill. And I think it's natural to suspect that the armour-plating of learned reference and obstrusive "difficulty" is at root a sort of defensive move -- it tends to silence thoughtful criticism because there's always the worry you just haven't "got it" somehow, have missed the key reference or whatever. And I find a lot of the late work, after he returned to the UK, politically tone-deaf, I think he was genuinely "out of tune" with the country from which he clearly still derived very strongly his sense of personal and historic identity. I do genuinely like & enjoy the late formal sequences (the Pindarics, odes and "Clavics" especially) but I also agree with Jeremy (comment below) that there's something oddly thin about them beneath all the fireworks. I find him a profoundly sad poet to be honest. (Hence, at root, about as un-Pindaric as it is possible to be.)
Loved this. A lot of the English Pindaricks or Pindariques written after Cowley are funereal elegies, aren't they; I wonder if perhaps the traces of the English Pindaric mode can be found in later varieties of elegy and its hybrids. In which case something like Alice Notley's "Songs and Stories of the Ghouls" might serve as a representative modern Pindarique, exactly because it's also a... checks notes... meta-elegiac surrealist free verse dream epistle, in praise of the world's (un)dead?
Thanks for this illuminating dissection of the Pindaricity (or otherwise) of Hill’s Pindarics. I like quite a lot of late Hill, but the sequences that seems primarily driven by his ability to riff on complex formal frames seem the thinnest to me. Tellingly, I think, there’s nothing you could compare them to in Eliot, Pound or Larkin (to go back to the canon cited in your footnote) — all poets who, differently, had a strong feeling for poetry as an impulse that finds the form for its occasion, rather than the other way around.
Thanks Jeremy. Like a lot of people I think I have reservations about the later Hill as a whole. Unlike you, I think I have found the most highly formal sequences -- the odes, the Pindarics and the "Clavics" -- the most rewarding so far, but that might just be that these are the ones I've spent most time with. All the same, I agree with you that there's something "thin" (good word) here -- and evasive -- despite the extravagant "thickness" (density, difficulty) of the language. I agree that what he is doing in these late formal sequences is not like Pound, Eliot or Larkin, this is a great and v. helpful observation. It is obviously, however, like quite a lot of ancient, medieval or early modern poets who worked intensively in a single form, or a series of very closely related ones. I suppose I find the poetic "idea" -- create or resurrect a form and then teach your readers how to read it -- engaging, even if I'm not sure whether in these cases it really succeeds. I think he is also a v. interesting point of comparison to e.g. Sisson who also invented many forms, but tended to write just a few of each, and then spread them around in collections, so it is much less obvious.
That is interesting, and I will look again at Sisson with that knowledge... There are a lot of poets I like who tend to one kind of form, but I never felt convinced that Hill was really one of them. This, though, helps me to see why I would say the first and last books of his late work -- The Triumph of Love and The Book of Baruch -- are the best: in each one, he takes a loose frame for a long poem, and improvises sections freely within it -- a method he discovered in Mercian Hymns, which stands out among the early work as a discovery. I also like Scenes from Comus, which has contrasting stanza forms, and A Treatise of Civil Power, which is individual poems on a theme. Clavics I'm afraid left me cold!
glad these got their due! and in excellent fashion.
Thanks for your original query! I still think Hill is almost the opposite of Pindaric in spirit, but that in itself is interesting I suppose. I realise I didn't attempt to speculate on why he chose this form, but my guess would be that at root the choice had a lot more to do with Cowley than with Pindar himself.
Thanks, Fascinating. Very helpful. Nevertheless, I have tried and tried to like, enjoy, understand (in that order!) Hill's poetry over the years (and there are one or two poems), but these late books, I feel he talking to himself, and constructing, with that hard labour (laborious?) you mention, a poetic diction, "poetry". The one I like best is where he suddenly goes plainer, more direct, in A Treatise of Civil Power.
I think a lot of people feel the same Martin and indeed I suspect that is partly the reason for the reserved engagement from readers and critics with the later Hill. And I think it's natural to suspect that the armour-plating of learned reference and obstrusive "difficulty" is at root a sort of defensive move -- it tends to silence thoughtful criticism because there's always the worry you just haven't "got it" somehow, have missed the key reference or whatever. And I find a lot of the late work, after he returned to the UK, politically tone-deaf, I think he was genuinely "out of tune" with the country from which he clearly still derived very strongly his sense of personal and historic identity. I do genuinely like & enjoy the late formal sequences (the Pindarics, odes and "Clavics" especially) but I also agree with Jeremy (comment below) that there's something oddly thin about them beneath all the fireworks. I find him a profoundly sad poet to be honest. (Hence, at root, about as un-Pindaric as it is possible to be.)
Loved this. A lot of the English Pindaricks or Pindariques written after Cowley are funereal elegies, aren't they; I wonder if perhaps the traces of the English Pindaric mode can be found in later varieties of elegy and its hybrids. In which case something like Alice Notley's "Songs and Stories of the Ghouls" might serve as a representative modern Pindarique, exactly because it's also a... checks notes... meta-elegiac surrealist free verse dream epistle, in praise of the world's (un)dead?