Gerard Manley Hopkins and Geoffrey Hill

Literary influence is rarely as simple as locating the language of one writer in the work of another. Often it comes by way of, or in correspondence with, other writers, part of a chorus of influence. In Geoffrey Hill’s poetry, Gerard Manley Hopkins’s voice is part of the polyphonic, interweaving echoes that the reader detects. Hill’s allusions to Hopkins come in clusters and compounds, leaving the reader to tease out threads and affinities. Hill’s poetic texture is a particularly dense one of layer upon layer of allusion, each adding through its context to the poem’s meaning. Hill’s allusions to Hopkins often recall stylistic features of other poets as well, including T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats. This layering of ghostly echoes informs Hill’s own ambiguity, word formations, visual perceptions, and imagery to complicate his unique voice even as it animates and strengthens it.