This first selection of Geoffrey Hill's poetry charts the evolution of a complex, uncompromising, visionary body of work over fifty years. It includes poems from Hill's astonishing debut,For the Unfallen("A powerful book . . . Ornate, rhetorical, thematically and stylistically ambitious."Guardian), through the verset-sequenceMercian Hymns, to acclaimed recent work, includingThe Orchards of SyonandWithout Title. Critics have observed that the poet's lines are imbued with the consciousness of the weight of history, morality, and language. John Hollander writes of Hill's poems that they immerse themselves "in the matters of stones and rock, of permanence and historical change, martyrdoms and mockeries, and above all history and the monuments and residua of its consequences in places, things, and persons." The appearance ofSelected Poemsmarks a major publishing event.