Geoffrey Hill is dead, and still, now, as I read his words,
his voice keeps crossing over. And a woman at a nearby
table says to her companion, I am so many people these days—
mother, child, whore—I feel exhausted. And as she laughs,
her unlit cigarette keeps making little circles, and the other
woman listens. I want to say, I know the feeling, when I know
I cannot. I want to break through unspoken boundaries.
I cannot write of Nobody, says Hill. No one to narrate this.
But then his writing, with all its ferocity and plumage, turns
from an image of the self as a peacock to praise the bird’s
bare corrosive scream. I cannot speak for no one. I try.
Some laughter belies the cutlery inside it. But what I see
in the author’s portrait is his namesake, a rock, withholding
and thereby held. What I hear is a woman and her broken
English, the many selves lonely for the one who talks of them.
Her companion says, yes. The unlit cigarette rises and falls.
And as I bow my head, I read a little deeper. Names live alone
their separate lives, says Hill. Yes, I say. And softer still, yes, yes.
Bruce Bond is the author of thirty-four books including, most recently, Patmos (Juniper Prize, UMass, 2021), Behemoth (New Criterion Prize, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, Schaffner, 2022), and Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), plus two books of criticism Immanent Distance (U. of Michigan, 2015) and Plurality and the Poetics of Self (Palgrave, 2019). Among his forthcoming books are Therapon (inspired by Emmanuel Levinas and co-authored with Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo) and Vault (Richard Snyder Award, Ashland). Presently he teaches part-time as a Regents Emeritus Professor of English at the University of North Texas and performs jazz and classical guitar in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
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Author: Bruce Bond
Bruce Bond is the author of thirty-four books including, most recently, Patmos (Juniper Prize, UMass, 2021), Behemoth (New Criterion Prize, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, Schaffner, 2022), and Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), plus two books of criticism Immanent Distance (U. of Michigan, 2015) and Plurality and the Poetics of Self (Palgrave, 2019). Among his forthcoming books are Therapon (inspired by Emmanuel Levinas and co-authored with Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo) and Vault (Richard Snyder Award, Ashland). Presently he teaches part-time as a Regents Emeritus Professor of English at the University of North Texas and performs jazz and classical guitar in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
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