One of the final poems in The Dance, the seventh collection by Christian Wiman, is titled “Geoffrey Hill.” The poem does not invoke the great English poet out of deference or mere awe; rather, it feels like a conversation between Wiman and Hill. “A bird flecks from the worded scene,” Wiman writes, “arrows insolently alive across the yard / to re-instill itself on a topmost twig, / two quick curt chirps confirming choice.”
The mimetic lines are sharp, although Wiman’s wink in worded feels like both a self-referential gesture and a theological move. The poem’s epigraph, after all, is from John 1:1: “. . . and the Word was God.” Yet the poet follows these well-drawn descriptions with further complication, calling the images of the bird “teasings of original, elemental life.”
Comments