Dear Katy,
Geoffrey Hill is one of the first poets I think of as experimental in relation to his continual creation of form and voice appropriate for each of his books. I don't know who to compare with him in this regard. Please tell me know who you think of as experimental, since this is one of many matters in which people have differing ideas.
I think it important to note that, while the right margin varies in the several editions of The Mercian Hymns/, the poems are published with an indentation that creates a shape that is not a block, as you have presented. (No break, either, after "new estates:".) Hill says, in your excerpt, that he designed the appearance of the page. Each hymn looks like this, with a varying number of indented lines, and a right-hand margin for the final line based on its length:
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Because the end-words are not consistent between editions, this shape seems to indicate that Hill is wrapping his lines, a la Whitman. I wonder if he isn't thinking, too, of ancient mss with lyrics written in this shape, as well as what he calls a verset..
Verset has been used in a variety of ways. Robert Alter uses it to emphasize parallels in biblical verse; each of two or three parallel elements in a line is a verset, so several versets comprise a line. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics identifies it as both the short lines of the Bible and the long lines of the French Symbolists. Those of you know know French better than I do, might look in Littré where both shape and function enter into the definition. Hill's use?
Best,
Marcia
[This message has been edited by Marcia Karp (edited April 06, 2006).]
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