true surreal

The true surreal that is not meant to shock but to astonish.

astonishing turn

Another page, another chance to astonish.

not so simple

The desire I have to astonish is offset by an attraction to the simple.

three-dimensional almost

At one point in The Orchards of Syon (XXIII) I say ‘I write / to astonish myself’. This self-astonishment is achieved when, by some process I can’t fathom, common words are moved, or move themselves, into clusters of meaning so intense that they seem to stand up from the page, three-dimensional almost.

—Geoffrey Hill, Don’t Ask Me What I Mean,
edited by Clare Brown and Don Paterson (Picador, 2003)