Speech! Speech! [BARGAIN PRICE] (Paperback)

by Geoffrey Hill (Author) "Erudition, Pain, Light, Imagine it great unavoidable work; although: heroic verse a non-starter, says PEOPLE..." (more)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
England's most fearsome living poet, Hill (Canaan, etc.), who has been working out of Boston University of late, has long been admired for his moral and philosophical seriousness and for his densely worked, hyperallusive language. Laid out in 120 12-line sections, Hill's new book-length poem follows naturally from, and often resembles, his 1998 The Triumph of Love, which arranged European history, political theory, autobiography and glittering, fragmentary description into one powerful, challenging, mosaiclike book. This work, like that one, invokes literary masters and historical martyrs and denounces England's, Europe's, and America's tawdry, media-driven present, where "Cameo actors can make killings/ their legacies." Boasting a brassier, denser metric than Hill's previous work has used, Hill's terse declarations and haughty thrusts give many passages their strength; they can render other bits monotonous or too private to decode. Individual sections (especially toward the middle of the work) function as self-contained arguments and lamentsAthese are among the best parts: one remembers the World War I poet Isaac Rosenberg, while another considers the "caught-short trot-pace of early film." Though less compellingly narrative than Triumph, this is Hill's most personal book yet. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
"A monumental poem that changes the order of poetry in English, as Beckett changed our prose." -- Rosanna Warren

"Geoffrey Hill's poetry is the major achievement of late-twentieth-century verse." -- William Logan, The New Criterion

"Hill is the central poet-prophet of our augmenting darkness; he inherits the authority of the visionaries from Dante and Blake on to D. H. Lawrence." -- Harold Bloom

"I think Geoffrey Hill is probably the best writer alive." -- A. N. Wilson, The Daily Telegraph, September 28, 2000 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• ISBN-10: 1582432406
• ASIN: B000HWYOQ2
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,608,167 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bug'rit! Millenium hand and shrimp!, January 22, 2001

By	Dominic Fox (Leicester, Leicestershire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Speech! Speech! (Hardcover)

"Speech! Speech!" continues much in the mode of "The Triumph of Love": praise and lament "in different voices", a polyphonous essay into the stresses and strengths of the English language, its potential for wrought honesty as well as casual deception.

The poem's ethical obsession is with pitch, as opposed to tone: the making and upholding, in language, of difficult distinctions as opposed to - so far as it can be held distinct from - the equitable imperative smoothing-over of disputes and differends (the "healing" snake-oil of much contemporary political rhetoric). In illustration of this, as in obedience to it, "Speech! Speech!" bristles with split hairs. The defamatory satirical genius of the poem lies in its outrageous conflations, a wit that works insidiously, like guilt, by association. But its moral animus ("animus is what I home on, even as to pitch" - section 90) is focussed on those parts of speech where one is surprised to see distinctions being made, or remade - surprised that they should (still) be thought or seen to matter.

There are many places in the poem where it becomes difficult, important, to ascertain what is being driven at, from what angle (or angles) and with what force. So, in section 57, the speaker beckons:

Show you something. Shakespeare's elliptical late syntax renders clear the occlusions, calls us to account...

The reader of "Speech! Speech!" is similarly drawn to the places where Hill's elliptical verse indicates, but does not show, unaccounted-for ommissions, exclusions, losses. We are ordered to "[j]udge the distance" between generations, to take the measure of what Hill sees as the abrupt - overnight - pillage and erasure of a common heritage - "common" in a sense to be distinguished from, but not opposed to, that of "demotic". This is arguable, of course, and the poem argues with itself about it, about the meaning of "democracy" and the condescension of "the egalitarian anti-elitist SUN" (a widely-circulated British newspaper, whose language Hill parodies passim). Nevertheless, Hill seems genuinely shocked by the way that English culture has changed over the past fifty years, and is clearly contemptuous of the ability of electronic databases and the "world-surfing quote research / unquote of your average junk maestro" (cheers!) to replace the "forms of understanding, far from despicable, / and furthest now, as they are most despised" he celebrated in "The Triumph of Love" (section CXIX). His argument may be judged reactionary, but it is passionately made.

I have found it difficult to receive the verses of "Speech! Speech!" as Hill says they were intended - as praise-songs. What is being praised is presumably the faculty the poem itself aspires to, that of fashioning a language fit for human use out of the "acoustic din" of an indifferent mass culture. Or, rather, what is both praised and petitioned by "Speech! Speech!" is that part of ourselves that might find a use for such a language, that is too proud and attentive to be satisfied with less - that is healthy enough to curse. But sheer celebratory delight (not, for once, miscalled) is achieved only in brief epiphanic flushes, as if by concession: for the most part the dominant, almost ineluctable mood of the poem is one of sadness and anger.

"Speech! Speech!" is a poem to spend time with - more time than I have spent so far. Notice is given on the inside sleeve that it is a "tour de force", and I would not dissent from that; however, there is much about it that will not come immediately, and may not come at all until the last measures of one's own reading (such is the messianic hope of interpretation). Off you go, then...

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars difficult genius, February 5, 2001

By	"ozawabird" (Boston, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Speech! Speech! (Hardcover)

The man is brilliant, but so difficult to get through. I would suggest having a handy reference section nearby. He has a beautiful way with words. The current volume is one long poem, divided into sections (in a similar way to "The Triumph of Love").

Hill will definitely become more widely appreciated as time wears on...

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A deep, disturbing work of poetry, January 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Speech! Speech! (Hardcover)

Geoffrey Hill is truly a poet's poet. His work is highly intellectual, peppered with references, and tersely worded. Behind the imposing verbal front, however, one finds a vast expanse of wry, analytical intelligence and an immense compassion for his fellow man. "Speech! Speech!" is Hill's newest book, which he describes as his "Inferno"; with his usual erudition and wit (as well as a fair amount of introspection), Hill examines the state of the media in today's world, and his relationship to it. His words tear through such topics as the death of Princess Diana, the BBC in his childhood, and the prevelence of rap. "Speech! Speech!" is a volume both of dissent and of hope; at times brutally honest, unbearably ugly, it is at the same time a testament to the redeeming and timeless power of poetry.