What isn't it about. The more you require it, the more it slips from focus, skews in the frame, the true commonweal out of true. But these are the demands of a Hill-poem. Occasionally the criticism can seem too sharp, too relentless, interspersed with anagrammatic wordplay that undermines the substance. Hill's blistering poem is not without hope, but it is heavy, heady stuff.
Erudition does weigh on the poem.
But he cannot quite leave be, cannot lose himself in the played world. And there is something to be said for standards. But Hill has something to say, and he expresses it quite remarkably. The complete review 's Geoffrey Hill page. A graduate of Keble College, Oxford, he has taught at the University of Leeds, at Cambridge, and at Boston University.