Penguin Modern Poets 7

by Toby Martinez de las Geoffrey Evans Rowan Rivas

Grappling with nature, religion, violence and politics, poems of lucid intensity and astonishing power from three remarkable British poetsGeoffrey Hill (1932-2016) was often considered the greatest English-language poet of his generation. Penguin Modern Poets 7: God Is Distant gathers a selection spanning Hill's full body of poetry, from the astonishing power and compression of the first five decades to the greater experimentalism and fluency of the creative outpouring that began in 1997, and places it alongside work by two younger British Rowan Evans, whose 'tirelessly inventive' and 'vivid lyrical work' (Denise Riley, Eric Gregory Award citation) plays with the legacy of late modernism to create poetry of great beauty, energy and precision; and Toby Martinez de las Rivas, whose first two collections have seen his 'visionary disposition' (Guardian) build to rhetorical heights of Blakean dimensions.Taken together, these are poems of lucid intensity, high seriousness and knowing sidelong glances, as alert to the natural world of the British countryside as they are to the body that suffers and to questions of the soul. They take a long view of humanity's riches and crises, and consider such issues as morality, faith, innocence, redemption, the public spaces of democracy and the acts of violence that rupture them.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published August 30, 2018

Reviews

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

The seventh and latest instalment in the new Penguin Modern Poets series, 'These Hard And Shining Things', features poems by Rowan Evans, Geoffrey Hill and Toby Martinez de las Rivas. Evans' poems are wondertully varied; many sparse and scattered, others more densely packed, he pays constant attention to language, more in the sense of the succinctness of each word than in the overall flow, without ever lapsing into clunky or forced choices. The poems of Geoffrey Hill, meanwhile, demonstrate why he was "widely considered the greatest living poet in the English language before his death in 2016"; sprawling and rooted in history and literary tradition, with heavy poems sometimes turning surprisingly with unexpected rhythms and softnesses, Hill has an effortless but reserved musicality and is represented here by diverse works. Finally, Toby Martinez de las Rivas, whose collections 'Terror' and 'Black Sun' are amongst my favourites, innovates formally while writing timeless verse, never rooted in the present and yet never distant in the past, always in that liminal space, never insisting upon themselves and yet never allowing the reader complacency. While this was perhaps not the most exciting (or diverse) offering in this series so far, it does show a good range from three poets of different ages, times, and styles.

[Philip Coulter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I already knew and liked Geoffrey Hill. This had some of the more recent stuff that I wasn't as familiar with. As much as I ever understand it, I can get my head round it a bit better with longer selections of his work. This is fine, but really just a taster.

Rowan Evans was striking and dramatic, and didn't really do much for me.
Toby Martinez was more interesting, but mostly felt a bit personal. I'm not sure if I'd find the effort worth the reward, in the way I do with Hill. One to return to.