tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5145200404704322540.post4894216374749661669..comments2023-10-11T06:50:10.494-04:00Comments on The Glass-Bottom Blog: "The grading and measuring of words"Zedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10623092831367861959noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5145200404704322540.post-16171005906383806382011-05-30T17:02:35.557-04:002011-05-30T17:02:35.557-04:00I think I was just trying to read his remarks in a...I think I was just trying to read his remarks in a way that answered both questions, but this seems quite impossible to do. Anyway Hill seems to have chosen his words carefully so I'd like to understand what precisely he wanted them to mean. Is "a threatened hierarchy" (a) a threatened rank in a stable hierarchy or (b) a threatened hierarchical structure, i.e., distinctions the validity of which is either subjective or dissolving, or (c) a vanishing priesthood? What does it mean to "attune one's poetry" toward this threatened hierarchy? On readings (a) and (c) the point is one shouldn't sell one's work; on (b) it is that one should avoid falling into the primal soup of everyday language. Both are plausible w/ Hill. I don't think he is half-heartedly demeaning value; he's just refusing to argue for it. I agree that Hill's remark about Wordsworth probably has nothing to do with the second question, but imagine hierarchist (or hierarch) means _something_ specific, and has some traceable link to the first answer. One natural reading is to take W. as being a sort of medium, but it is not clear what a medium of the intelligence might be. Another reading that seems possible is my original one, which is to say that W. was a "hierarchist" as in willing and able to separate out the things that attracted his primary imagination: i.e., that peasants happened to appeal to W. just as books happen to appeal to Hill. This probably comes closest to addressing the interviewer's Q. because the point is that poetry needn't be obscure as a rule, Hill's poetry just happens to be so because that's what appeals to him. <br /><br />I agree that some of the answers are hilarious. However the archaism is not an act!Zedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10623092831367861959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5145200404704322540.post-51511568141812768712011-05-30T16:23:57.721-04:002011-05-30T16:23:57.721-04:00Hill's remarks seem perfectly intelligible for...Hill's remarks seem perfectly intelligible for me, if predictably tautological. He is taking the oft-abused license of the artist to attempt to reconfigure the questions to the "view from the inside," so:<br /><br />1. The poet is compelled to follow artistic instinct, if this results in work that requires prerequisites, so be it. This is justified by faith in "intrinsic value," which he half-heartedly demeans.<br /><br />2. The following question, as I think you suggest, demonstrates the interviewer's probably not up to the task. Hill doesn't seem to take it seriously. Because Wordsworth (of all people!) is a "hierarchist of the imagination," which sounds to me like a fancy way of saying "artist." I also like "unlettered," and the rest of Hill's self-dramatization as a casual archaist.<br /><br />I think your distinction takes too much from this—"peers" in particular I think would violate GH's "from the inside" manner. <br /><br />Dude is hilarious, also, later referring to Carol Anne Duffy, he says "I'm not naming names. If their decision is the right one, their work will endure;" which I think takes "intrinsic value" and ups the ante with some omniscient force. He also names names later.<br /><br />In its circular way though I think he's right about much else, which sadly isn't very illuminating here, since the interviewer apparently wants an account of his ballot behavior.zbshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14795831846754083167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5145200404704322540.post-47157001438423527372011-05-28T00:46:16.101-04:002011-05-28T00:46:16.101-04:00"Disinclination" is fair (I am fond of H..."Disinclination" is fair (I am fond of Hill's work for the plenitude of "graded"-like moments but confess that his sensibility is none of mine), and it is clear that some notion of prelate-like authority is implied, but where I'm stuck is understanding WHAT authority is being claimed by Hill, on what grounds. The direction of the Wordsworth ref. is clear, but I am puzzled re what Hill thinks confers status -- after all, being a peasant on a hill is crap unless you're sighted, even if you're the "woman, with her garments vexed and tossed / by the strong wind," and I don't understand what he thinks any of this has to do w/ his own practice or w/ the question of whether poetry should be elitist. Maybe it is just an evasion...Zedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10623092831367861959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5145200404704322540.post-51114453624637252802011-05-27T20:41:26.132-04:002011-05-27T20:41:26.132-04:00I am too lazy or perhaps just disinclined to go an...I am too lazy or perhaps just disinclined to go and read the whole interview, but I would wonder whether it isn't 'hierarch' more in the sense of prelate (it might even actually be a mistranscription), so that he is setting Wordsworth up as the charismatic authority in some sort of group encounter with the imagination in which not everyone can possibly be the same kind of authority/have the same kind of special status that W. does?<br /><br />("Graded" is indeed very good!)Jenny Davidsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02295436498255927522noreply@blogger.com