“We are the generation
that neglected Geoffrey Hill.”
We are those who venerated
the venal and mentally ill.
We liberated the libido
and individual will. We walked
the moon, and talked up the vox
populi. We sanitized the sexual and
sensationalized the pill.
We garnered blurbs, cooked
with herbs, left the ‘burbs. And left
our analysts. We channel surfed,
had T section births and elevated
the obscure and effete. We killed
chlorophyll, Near East good will
and neglected poor Geoffrey Hill.
Diana Der-Hovanessian (1934–2018) was a poet, a translator of Armenian poetry, and for many years a contributing editor of AGNI. She authored over twenty-three books of poetry and translation, was twice a Fulbright Professor, and received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, the PEN/Columbia Translation Center, the Armenian Writers Union, and the Paterson Poetry Center. Her poems appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, AGNI, The Partisan Review, The Nation, and elsewhere.
Der-Hovanessian’s collection Selected Poems was reviewed in AGNI 44 by Ellen Davis.