The Enemy's Country

Is poetry the distinctively free and self-contained form of language it has so often been called? Focusing on Dryden, but also looking at writers such as Donne, Hobbes, Marvell, and Pound, Geoffrey Hill examines the real conditions of poets' work, grounded as it is in the mundane drudgery and insecurity of historical existence. With humour and rigour, The Enemy's Country enacts the struggle of poetry for truth and meaning amid `the common practice of men'.