Geoffrey Hill was the major English poet of the last half of the twentieth century. Hill’s intransigence, his clotted difficulty, his passion for the redolent fineries of English landscape—he eyed the woods and fields like a plant hunter—have stood in magnificent solitude. Among the poets long set for A-level examinations in Britain, Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes, good poets in their way, had neither the depth nor the irritating brilliance of Hill—both Gunn and Hughes seem poets of their day, with the manners of that day. That’s the fate of most poets—for many, their highest aim. Hill was never on the syllabus.

That Hill from the start was trying to escape his time—perhaps to wrestle his way out—was apparent in the coiled syntax and lush imagery of his first books, For the Unfallen (1959) and King Log (1968):

The Word has been abroad, is back, with a tanned look

From its subsistence in the stiffening-mire.

Cleansing has become killing, the reward

Touchable, overt, clean to the touch.

Now at a distance from the steam of beasts,

The loathly neckings and fat shook spawn

(Each specimen-jar fed with delicate spawn)

The searchers with the curers sit at meat

And are satisfied.