Canaan: Poetry of Moral Urgency and Historical Witness―Suffering, Martyrdom, and the Millennium

by Geoffrey Hill

Here is public poetry of uncommon moral urgency: it bears witness to the sufferings of the innocent at the hands of history and to the martyrdom of those who have dared look history in the eye. "Rich, quarrelsome...handsome and brutish...Hill's poetry is the major achievement of late-twentieth-century verse," says The New Criterion. "Canaan is one of the few serious books we will have to mark the millennium."

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Sir Geoffrey William Hill was an English poet and professor emeritus of English literature and religion.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a big fan of Hill. But Hill is not an easy poet. He supplies no end notes, so often the reader is left with the language itself. Without some knowledge of history and the Bible, much will be missed. Despite that, I feel Hill’s language, at its best, does possess what Michael Dirda of the Washington Post called a “sensuality and coiled force,” which in a way reminds me of Donne, and the idea of the “strong line.” Nevertheless, Hill is a poet of the 20th Century. The images and history he draws on are our own. He is a Christian poet, but one who is practically Manichean in his use of light and dark in history. For Hill “innocence is no earthly weapon.”

In Canaan, Hill has reinvented himself, choosing image over rhyme. His earlier work, which also possessed strong images, was more formal, and somewhat recalled Allan Tate (a poet Hill greatly admires). The book has a number of stunning sequences. My favorite is “De Jure Belli Ac Pacis,” which is dedicated to Hans Bernd von Haefton, one of the bomb plot conspirators against Hitler. Martyrdom is important to Hill, and he shows it’s cost, absent the hagiography:

"The iron-beamed engine shed has chapel windows.
Glare-eyed you spun. The hooks are still in the beam;
a sun patch drains to nothing; here the chocked
blood seeped into place, here the abused blood
set its own wreaths."

The whole sequence runs on like this, taut and powerful. I saw Hill read this years ago, and he said this poem caused some problems with a friend, a Dominican priest, in particular the line

“Evil is not good’s absence but gravity’s
everlasting bedrock and its fatal chains
inert, violent, the suffrage of our days.”

Hill acknowledged the grimness of these lines, and the possibility of a theological line being crossed, but he also felt this a legitimate (and human) response for poet and non-poet alike. What we think and muse over is not the same thing as belief. He then appealed for a theologian in the house (Catholic University and Georgetown are nearby). (Hill is funny in person, and mocks his own gravity at times. He is also generous in explaining poems and answering questions.)

Another remarkable sequence is “Scenes with Harlequins,” which is written in memory of Aleksandr Blok. Blok is an important figure is Russian literature, and is viewed by many Russians as something of a prophet. Hill touches on Blok’s prophetic nature with these vivid lines that show the deep religiousness of the Russian soul, but also the sense of an approaching storm -- the Revolution.

“The risen Christ! Once more
faith is upon us,
a jubilant brief keening
with respite:
Obedience, bitter joy,
the elements, clouds,
winds, louvres where the bell
makes its wild mouths:

Holy Rus – into the rain’s
horizons, peacock-dyed
tail feathers of storm,
so it goes on.”

The collection also has some sequences that are about England in particular, and the poet’s sense that what was once noble and heroic is now gone and that the country is “voiding substance like quicklime”. You will also find pieces dealing with government “Mysticism and Democracy” and the Church of England. All are couched in terms of a country in downward spiral, which I find very reminiscent of the Book of Kings. There is an extended sequence dealing with Churchill’s funeral, where the old veterans are poignantly portrayed as warriors from another time:

“The men hefting
their accouterments
of webbed tin, many
in bandages,

with cigarettes,
with scuffed hands aflare,
as though exhaustion
drew them to life;”

The rest of the collection also has a number of dedicatory poems to such figures as William Arrowsmith, William Cobbitt, Aileen Ireland, and others. I don’t really know who these people are, but it doesn’t seem to matter, much in a way that those elegies of Donne continue to move us, even though the people they were written for seem distant. It’s best, I think, to view such poems as vehicles for the poet’s speculation on larger matters. Not knowing the subject certainly didn’t affect my enjoyment of the dedicatory poems, and Hill’s austere and muscular language.

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hill’s Renaissance Faire to Ashbery’s Oscar night. But where John, endless onion, always makes me grin, grave and grumpy Geoffrey’s what I cut to get a cry.

[Jon Cone · Rating 4 out of 5]

The English poet Geoffrey Hill is in possession of a pitiless, stony imagination: his language nearly free of all familiar lyric involvements.

Thus, these lines from his poem 'Ezekiel's Wheel' :

"Let the brittle
devourers, the locusts
of pity, enrobe you:
let the veteran
maimed fig tree stand
stark out of the waste."

[58]

If these few lines interest you, then Geoffrey Hill is a poet
whose thorns and stone, whose ruins of history and revelation,
will provide, if not solace, a quiescent rancor that yet
gives curious relief from the surrounding sea of our modern
day idiocies.

[Kai Coates · Rating 2 out of 5]

Flashes of brilliance, yes. But mostly I was left unanchored. Would I appreciate it more if I was English or Christian or not reading this 30 years later? Probably. So much came off as judgment without background.

[Uther Pendragon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a few thoughts and statements about Canaan and Geoffrey Hill:

Most of the poetry Geoffrey Hill wrote was difficult. Canaan is no exception. These poems are short on the page, but not short in substance. They are densely packed, and you'll find many things in Canaan: allusion and reference, innocence, history, religion, politics, epitaphs, economics, faith and the fight against evil, imagery, morality, and much more. There are many epigraphs—as well as individual words and phrases—written in different languages (English, Latin, French, German). And many of these poems are dedicated to people (artists, philosophers, politicians, clerics, and others).

Like much of his work, the poems in Canaan are mostly religious, distinctly British, and highly political, but this in no way limits any of them. The references, allusions, and other devices he uses propel these poems beyond place and ideology. However, on the surface, they are likely to be more meaningful to British people, especially for those interested in British politics and places, and Christianity. (Of course Christianity, one: it's Geoffrey Hill, and two: the book's title is Canaan.)

The power of the poems in Canaan accumulates as you read them.

Many of the titles are repeated in this collection: Parentalia, Mysticism and Democracy, To the High Court of Parliament, and Dark-land.

I own all of his books, and I'm making my way through his entire career. I haven't read all of his work yet, but I have read several poems from each of his books: as far as I know (based on all I've read and looked at), most of his poems are short, but he also has many long poetry sequences. And, of course, each sequence is made of several short poems.

Many readers feel that the bulk of Geoffrey Hill's poetry is inscrutable. It even baffles many people whose job is to read poetry and write about it.

Though it is often difficult poetry, it is not impossible. His work is extremely allusive, but after discovering the meanings of a few references and allusions, others become easier to decipher. Eventually, after careful reading and further study, entire poems will open up for you.

Geoffrey Hill was a true poet (as well as highly intelligent) with a vast amount of skill, so even if you don't understand his poetry on an intellectual level, you may still enjoy reading it. You may find that it speaks to you on a subconscious level.

Readers probably won't quote a lot of lines from this book, but that's not why one reads Geoffrey Hill.

If you like skillfully constructed, difficult, British, political, and/or religious poetry that is packed full of meaning, this book's for you. If none of that sounds appealing, you should probably avoid this book.

I liked Canaan and would give it 4.5, but I prefer to round up rather than down, so I'm giving it a 5.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hill is in a strange position--not experimental enough for the literary left, but far too crabbed, difficult and flat out weird for the Establishment. In other words, he's the kind of poet I like: I'm not going to get more than about 20% of what's going on from my first reading, but since the language is compelling, I'll keep reading, and one day might get up over 50%. In Canaan he borrows the tone of a biblical prophet to denounce and praise, depending on the object of his attention; usually it goes very well, sometimes it's all a bit too much. Much recommended.

[Ltopo McFly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very erudite and experimental in form but ultimately more style than substance.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admire the voice in these poems, and the torqued style, especially in a poem like "De Anima." I think, though, that the main topic of the book gets lost on me as I don't have a working knowledge of England's 20th century history. How do poems like "To the High Court of Parliament" work with the idea of Canaan, and are they describing Britain as that place or not?