Selected Poems

Theology makes good bedside reading. Some
who are lost covet scholastic proof,
subsistence of probation, modest balm.

This is a very mixed bag of verse, one which astounds, confounds, unnerves and sometimes squeaks from its own strain. Very human, that. Culled from a number of collections, Hill finds it necessary to not only lament, but to cite -- once he became an academic. Book titles clutter stanzas in an odd jumble.

Clamorous love, its faint and baffled shout,
its grief that would betray him to our fear,
he suffers for our sake, or does not hear

I happen to love that vantage of Christianity and its unfortunate, often bewildered, savior. As noted, I lost a close friend this week and then found some solace as my wife and I saw Bob Dylan perform. These twinned offerings, which yield and smote during our harvest bend remind us, it is something, some thing to be alive.

Where.
you will say, does explanation
end and confession begin? ( )

Muscular, grappling poetry with more Anglo-Saxonisms per square word than Beowulf - but Hill seems hobbled by academia; compelled to lard his every subject with God and Kierkegaard. I want him to cut loose with his poetic muckspreader and bespatter the various traditions; instead he's bent on creating an orthodoxy of his own. ( )