Geoffrey Hill readers: Our next poem will be "The White Ship," and in a few days Ruth will offer some opening thoughts and questions about the piece.

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I find that I can't stop thinking about the phrase from the John Fowles passage I posted yesterday. "Solitary obstinacy" is such an exact description of what it feels like to be an aging person who keeps doggedly trying to make art.

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Yesterday I printed out a sheaf of post-Chestnut Ridge poems and began reading through them. I may or may not have a complete manuscript. But I have something, and oddly it seems to require very little editing.

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"By all means let us appease the terse gods."

--Geoffrey Hill, from "Ode on the Loss of the 'Titanic'"