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Gerard Manley Hopkins : Poems and Prose / selected with an introduction and notes by W.H. Gardner
The Penguin Poets. Physical 260p. ; 18cm. Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1844-1889) -- Poems -- Criticism and interpretation.
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First published January 1, 1953
About the author
Gerard Manley Hopkins
196 books231 followersGerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets. His experimental explorations in prosody (especially sprung rhythm) and his use of imagery established him as a daring innovator in a period of largely traditional verse.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
May 18, 2020
Hopkins' poems, especially when read aloud, are often astounding feats of musicality. Like the written equivalent of beads of light flickering to nature's pulse on the gossamer strands of a spiderweb. Apparently he pioneered a technique known as sprung rhythm and in his best poems every word does exactly that - springs rhythm, creating a kind of hypnotic ring of enchantment around his subject. Mostly he writes about nature and God. His nature poems had my full attention; his God poems rather less so.
Hopkins' prose bored me silly. Firstly, we get extracts from a journal and almost immediately I got a sense of a man hiding from himself. He appears to have no inner life. Or as if it's something he's concreted over. There's a lot of sensibility responding to nature but it's kind of hollow when there's so little personality attached to the voice. The letters that follow are even more bereft of inspiration or life. He comes across as a varnished surface. Talks complacently about Empire as if it's a rose garden that has to be maintained with diligence. The most emotional he ever gets is when he becomes mildly indignant at a kindly vicar who unprompted, sends one of Hopkins' poems to a local newspaper.
Hopkins became a Catholic priest and destroyed all his early poems. The Catholic church, in his imagination at least, then functioned as a kind of censor on what he wrote. At the end of the day, you're either a poet or poetry is a hobby of yours. Hopkins seems caught up in this dilemma and perhaps it eventually caused him to be less of a poet than he should have been. A natural gift he has in abundance. One wishes he forged for himself a much more interesting and courageous life. Instead he chose to pinch and squeeze himself into the embodiment of Victorian starch, formality and repression. Shelley or Byron he is not.
Hopkins' prose bored me silly. Firstly, we get extracts from a journal and almost immediately I got a sense of a man hiding from himself. He appears to have no inner life. Or as if it's something he's concreted over. There's a lot of sensibility responding to nature but it's kind of hollow when there's so little personality attached to the voice. The letters that follow are even more bereft of inspiration or life. He comes across as a varnished surface. Talks complacently about Empire as if it's a rose garden that has to be maintained with diligence. The most emotional he ever gets is when he becomes mildly indignant at a kindly vicar who unprompted, sends one of Hopkins' poems to a local newspaper.
Hopkins became a Catholic priest and destroyed all his early poems. The Catholic church, in his imagination at least, then functioned as a kind of censor on what he wrote. At the end of the day, you're either a poet or poetry is a hobby of yours. Hopkins seems caught up in this dilemma and perhaps it eventually caused him to be less of a poet than he should have been. A natural gift he has in abundance. One wishes he forged for himself a much more interesting and courageous life. Instead he chose to pinch and squeeze himself into the embodiment of Victorian starch, formality and repression. Shelley or Byron he is not.
May 6, 2024
Gerard Hopkins Rocks BIG TIME! Swifties must adore him. Taylor's Version of the otherwise prim 'n proper Nineteenth Century's Lyrics FLY with Joy:
I saw this morning Morning's Minion -
High there as it rode the wimpling wind...
Who can beat that? Such poetic license in a poor Jesuit Priest! Such outright loving irreverence for the paltry nonpoetic but practical Anglo Saxon tongue!
I love him. In his short life, only a sine qua non superstar poet to fellow minor poet Robert Bridges. And because of Bridges his rivetingly extraordinary words are now commonplace.
But, oh, how they now Bore the fractious Woke.
A priest's poems good only for the dung pile?
Doubt it! He's a supernova in the Literary Firmament. Holy model for Aspie and Poet alike.
My Freshman English prof, Norman Mackenzie, was official editor for the Oxford Collected Poems. With freshman profs like that is it any WONDER I elected English as my Major?
Not.
Mackenzie was a frail old gent when he taught me.
But he's one teacher I'll never forget -
In my own Meetings with Remarkable Men.
And I'll never forget his friend Manley Hopkins, either!
Never.
He gave my Paltry Words WINGS.
I saw this morning Morning's Minion -
High there as it rode the wimpling wind...
Who can beat that? Such poetic license in a poor Jesuit Priest! Such outright loving irreverence for the paltry nonpoetic but practical Anglo Saxon tongue!
I love him. In his short life, only a sine qua non superstar poet to fellow minor poet Robert Bridges. And because of Bridges his rivetingly extraordinary words are now commonplace.
But, oh, how they now Bore the fractious Woke.
A priest's poems good only for the dung pile?
Doubt it! He's a supernova in the Literary Firmament. Holy model for Aspie and Poet alike.
My Freshman English prof, Norman Mackenzie, was official editor for the Oxford Collected Poems. With freshman profs like that is it any WONDER I elected English as my Major?
Not.
Mackenzie was a frail old gent when he taught me.
But he's one teacher I'll never forget -
In my own Meetings with Remarkable Men.
And I'll never forget his friend Manley Hopkins, either!
Never.
He gave my Paltry Words WINGS.
July 17, 2023
Loving God -- that shines through every page written by Gerard Manley Hopkins. He's my favorite poet for that very reason.
Of course it helps that he was one of the great synaesthetes in all of literature. Famous, in some circles, for his "sprung rhythm"... to me this represented more than a metrical scheme for poetics. In my view, theorizing about sprung rhythm created a permission structure: how Hopkins dared to present his spiritually powerful poetic language of onomatopoeia.
Among my favorites from Hopkins is "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo." Every word here resonates for me. Goodreaders and God lovers, here's a very small enticement to read the entire poem:
Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever’s prized and passes of us, everything that’s
fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and
swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and
dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matchèd face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an ever-
lastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Ever-fresh appreciation of our amazing world, and God's presence within it:
Nobody I've encountered yet has given such a voice to this essential fact of life for those of us who feel it and hear it, and couldn't bear human life without it.
Of course it helps that he was one of the great synaesthetes in all of literature. Famous, in some circles, for his "sprung rhythm"... to me this represented more than a metrical scheme for poetics. In my view, theorizing about sprung rhythm created a permission structure: how Hopkins dared to present his spiritually powerful poetic language of onomatopoeia.
Among my favorites from Hopkins is "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo." Every word here resonates for me. Goodreaders and God lovers, here's a very small enticement to read the entire poem:
Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever’s prized and passes of us, everything that’s
fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and
swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and
dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matchèd face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an ever-
lastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Ever-fresh appreciation of our amazing world, and God's presence within it:
Nobody I've encountered yet has given such a voice to this essential fact of life for those of us who feel it and hear it, and couldn't bear human life without it.
November 23, 2020
Helpful for a grumpy old atheist like me to square the circle a little with GMH and emphasise the whole God = Nature side, though to go too far down that route would be to do him a disservice.
Regardless, some of the most extraordinary use of the English language ever put to paper. Read and re-read many many times since a teenager, and never getting old.
Out of curiosity I did a little googling and was unsurprised to find William Gass and Alexander Theroux, to give but two examples, expressing their love of his work.
33. Inversnaid
THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
13. Pied Beauty
GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
11. The Sea and the Skylark
ON ear and ear two noises too old to end
Trench—right, the tide that ramps against the shore;
With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,
Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.
Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,
His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score
In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour
And pelt music, till none ’s to spill nor spend.
How these two shame this shallow and frail town!
How ring right out our sordid turbid time,
Being pure! We, life’s pride and cared-for crown,
Have lost that cheer and charm of earth’s past prime:
Our make and making break, are breaking, down
To man’s last dust, drain fast towards man’s first slime.
12. The Windhover
To Christ our Lord
I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
(I agree with him that the Windhover is probably the best thing he ever did. )
Regardless, some of the most extraordinary use of the English language ever put to paper. Read and re-read many many times since a teenager, and never getting old.
Out of curiosity I did a little googling and was unsurprised to find William Gass and Alexander Theroux, to give but two examples, expressing their love of his work.
33. Inversnaid
THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
13. Pied Beauty
GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
11. The Sea and the Skylark
ON ear and ear two noises too old to end
Trench—right, the tide that ramps against the shore;
With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,
Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.
Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,
His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score
In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour
And pelt music, till none ’s to spill nor spend.
How these two shame this shallow and frail town!
How ring right out our sordid turbid time,
Being pure! We, life’s pride and cared-for crown,
Have lost that cheer and charm of earth’s past prime:
Our make and making break, are breaking, down
To man’s last dust, drain fast towards man’s first slime.
12. The Windhover
To Christ our Lord
I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
(I agree with him that the Windhover is probably the best thing he ever did. )
February 18, 2008
Gerard Manley Hopkins was a lugubrious Victorian Jesuit who wrote some of the most amazing poetry you will ever read in your life. And the only conceivable way I can persuade you that statement is true is to include some of that poetry here:
That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire And Of The Comfort Of The Resurrection
Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indignation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; world's wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
So, here's the thing. As a distinctly lapsed Catholic, I can't say that I share Father Hopkins's faith in the comfort of the resurrection. Not on doctrinal grounds anyway. But that poem is so insanely beautiful that I start to think that anyone who can write like that might be on to something ...
And he keeps doing it: "Inversnaid", "Pied Beauty", "God's Grandeur", and - probably his most well-known poem - "The Windhover". Extraordinary poems - about half a century ahead of their time.
Poetry so beautiful it will send chills up your spine. If it doesn't, maybe you're dead inside.
That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire And Of The Comfort Of The Resurrection
Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indignation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; world's wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
So, here's the thing. As a distinctly lapsed Catholic, I can't say that I share Father Hopkins's faith in the comfort of the resurrection. Not on doctrinal grounds anyway. But that poem is so insanely beautiful that I start to think that anyone who can write like that might be on to something ...
And he keeps doing it: "Inversnaid", "Pied Beauty", "God's Grandeur", and - probably his most well-known poem - "The Windhover". Extraordinary poems - about half a century ahead of their time.
Poetry so beautiful it will send chills up your spine. If it doesn't, maybe you're dead inside.
April 18, 2024
Hopkins was the first to introduce me to the glory of English. Although I do not consider his notion of "inscape" to be beyond critique, his best poems recreate language so stupendously, that they seem to belong to the final eschatalogical state.
The prose content of this collection includes such varied elements as a technical defense of sprung rhythm, a discussion of why Hopkins is Walt Whitman's poetic foil, and his discovery of the Irish phrase "I wouldn't put it past you."
The prose content of this collection includes such varied elements as a technical defense of sprung rhythm, a discussion of why Hopkins is Walt Whitman's poetic foil, and his discovery of the Irish phrase "I wouldn't put it past you."
March 27, 2024
At his best, Hopkins speaks with thrilling freshness that opens to the reader the world anew. To use his taxonomy, Hopkins' "Poetry" is magnificent and vivid, while his "Parnassian" is at times a precocious and self-indulgent plod.
July 27, 2019
Write-up and poetry samples to come -- tomorrow I hope. Finished the prose section today and immediately re-started on the poetry -- with new insights.
December 15, 2009
I love this man's poetry, and when I discovered his journal entries, I was moved and delighted. He notices so much in nature; I love how he writes about the particular sunset of each day in his entries, and the birds he has seen.
May 29, 2008
I don't know if this is a different publication of the edition that I have, but in any case, Hopkins' poetry is the most powerfully audible poetry that I know. His mastery of sound transforms rhyming, alliteration, and assonance from the hallmarks of juvenile doggerl into a truly poetic symphony of language. For this reason, even though his poetry may be difficult to understand, it is always a delight to hear.
June 21, 2009
There's just nothing better. He may be dark and introspective, but in the end Hopkins always looks out and looks out with hope towards Christ.
"Christ minds; Christ's interests, what to avow or amend
There; eyes them, heart wants, care haunts, foot follows kind,
Their ransome, their rescue, and first, fast, last friend."
~Lantern Out of Doors
I hope I remembered those lines correctly.
"Christ minds; Christ's interests, what to avow or amend
There; eyes them, heart wants, care haunts, foot follows kind,
Their ransome, their rescue, and first, fast, last friend."
~Lantern Out of Doors
I hope I remembered those lines correctly.
July 26, 2019
Some very beautiful stuff. Many of the poems give glory to creation and to the creator. Hopkins is a Catholic Jesuit priest. His writing looks ultimately to God. Some of these are absolutely breathtaking. Some I can't understand. I'm sure that's my fault.
I keep coming back to this. So beautiful. Uplifting. Inspiring. I don’t have words to do these poems justice.
I keep coming back to this. So beautiful. Uplifting. Inspiring. I don’t have words to do these poems justice.
May 15, 2007
All of Hopkins' poetry is amazing, but the "Windhover" in particular is one of the most impressive lyrics I've every read. Hopkins' explosion of the sonnet form and embrace of the notion of oral poetry makes him one of the most powerful voices in modern poetry.
February 19, 2020
4 stars for the poems.
September 17, 2017
Before this book, I had not been exposed to the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. I will say very little on the collection of prose that makes up this book. That collection is largely made up of letters, and while interesting to anyone interested in learning more about the great poet, Hopkins, the letters in and of themselves are, in my opinion, rather forgettable on their own merit.
The poetry, however, is absolutely amazing. Hopkins was a Victorian poet, but one who experimented widely throughout his poems. They are marked by his use of sprung rhythm, perhaps the greatest use of alliteration I can imagine amongst any poet, and incredible imagery. He was an Englishmen who because a Catholic, and the poems also reflect his intense religiosity.
I did not expect to find myself so stunned by these poems. They are wholly original and exciting. My favorite sections are the following:
“The Windhover”
From “Spring”
From “The Wreck of the Deutschland, Part the First”
From “The Wreck of the Deutschland, Part the Second”
See my other reviews here!
The poetry, however, is absolutely amazing. Hopkins was a Victorian poet, but one who experimented widely throughout his poems. They are marked by his use of sprung rhythm, perhaps the greatest use of alliteration I can imagine amongst any poet, and incredible imagery. He was an Englishmen who because a Catholic, and the poems also reflect his intense religiosity.
I did not expect to find myself so stunned by these poems. They are wholly original and exciting. My favorite sections are the following:
“The Windhover”
To Christ our Lord
I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
From “Spring”
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring-
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
From “The Wreck of the Deutschland, Part the First”
Thou mastering me
God! Giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastend me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
From “The Wreck of the Deutschland, Part the Second”
Into the snows she sweeps,
Hurling the haven behind,
The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps,
For the infinite air is unkind,
And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular blow,
Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind;
Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivelled snow
Spins to the wido-making unchilding unfathering deeps.
See my other reviews here!
April 1, 2024
British lit course
June 27, 2022
i am sorry but hopkins is one of my favorite poets writing in english & "moonrise" is one of the best poems in history... "parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, eyelid and eyelid of slumber" are you seeing this shit nicki minaj
May 10, 2009
How to speak of Hopkins?
We live in an era and a civilization in which the cultivated appreciation of all the arts has been besmirched with snobbery and identified with wealth and privilege. For all but the few born to wealth and privelege, then, cultivated taste automatically becomes a kind of treason against class. The only exceptions are things like Celtic music, which have clear ties to currently popular forms.
Appreciation of Hopkins’ poetry requires cultivation not only of vocabulary, but of a stock of referents in literature and awareness of the ancestry of words. Being a language nerd is a start, but only a start. You need to be able to walk outside urbanized areas and know and appreciate what you’re looking at: birds, rocks, trees, plants, sky. How many people do that nowadays, even those who claim to love “Nature” ?
After all that, you’re ready for Wordsworth, Shelley, and all those guys they give you in literature appreciation. Hopkins, though, is going to ask you to appreciate something he calls “sprung rhythm”, which substitutes the meter of living language for the strict duh-dah, duh-dah, duh-dah, duh-dah, duh-dah we’re all used to. Then, he turns around and asks us to accept some highly irregular word order and word coinages to make his resurrection of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse work. Well, it’s also about making the sounds of words and underlying meanings come out stronger. He’s heavy, but he’s great.
Since I read “Spring And Fall: to a young girl” at the age of sixteen, I’ve felt with Hopkins a connection deeper than anything conveyed by the word “kinship”. I thrill to the identification with a soaring bird each time I read “To a Windhover”, and to the ultimate love and beauty that underlie all Manifestation, when I read “God’s Grandeur” — although the word and concept “God” has always seemed to me an unnecessary complication and, ultimately, an obscuration and distraction from that grand apprehension. I want to shout at Hopkins “Stop calling it ‘God’! Let yourself be open to the pure experience and wisdom! Let go of all those rules, all that verbiage, ideation, and dogma!” I totally understand his original attraction to Roman Catholicism, with its declaration of the Mystery and its recognition of grandeur. However, I’m mystified by his obsessive clinging to the tangled, and necrophilic apparatus of orthodoxy — but part of me understands it. Much as I’d rather not, I completely understand the sonnet that begins “No worst, there is none.” Though my Buddhist self eschews it, I am not yet totally removed from the self-hatred at the core of Christianity, in which as English-speakers, “Westerners”, we are all steeped.
“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.” cries from the depth of this self-hatred, but then goes further — to acceptance of its justice. Having already come to love and identify with Hopkins, I raged at this in! I got a “C” on a final exam at the U. Of Chicago that had this sonnet as an essay prompt — I couldn’t put together a coherent critique of it, nor leave it and get on with the rest of the exam.
Like thousands before me, I’ve felt closer to this really odd, truly sick, yet beautiful and brilliant mind than so many I’d be more comfortable with. I’ve wanted to jump into a time machine, sneak into his chamber and remonstrate with him about this acceptance of the notions of Original Sin and of a God who, after allowing the original event, then imposed the Supreme Sacrifice on his Only Begotten Son and — on top of all that — maintains the category of “the lost”, referred to in the penultimate line of “I wake . . .” What could such a being have to do with the glory of Manifestation? What sense is there in speaking of such an entity as “loving”, let alone “perfect”?
But, I have no time machine and I can easily envision great difficulty in reaching Hopkins, even had I one.
I love, embrace, and accept him as he is.
We live in an era and a civilization in which the cultivated appreciation of all the arts has been besmirched with snobbery and identified with wealth and privilege. For all but the few born to wealth and privelege, then, cultivated taste automatically becomes a kind of treason against class. The only exceptions are things like Celtic music, which have clear ties to currently popular forms.
Appreciation of Hopkins’ poetry requires cultivation not only of vocabulary, but of a stock of referents in literature and awareness of the ancestry of words. Being a language nerd is a start, but only a start. You need to be able to walk outside urbanized areas and know and appreciate what you’re looking at: birds, rocks, trees, plants, sky. How many people do that nowadays, even those who claim to love “Nature” ?
After all that, you’re ready for Wordsworth, Shelley, and all those guys they give you in literature appreciation. Hopkins, though, is going to ask you to appreciate something he calls “sprung rhythm”, which substitutes the meter of living language for the strict duh-dah, duh-dah, duh-dah, duh-dah, duh-dah we’re all used to. Then, he turns around and asks us to accept some highly irregular word order and word coinages to make his resurrection of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse work. Well, it’s also about making the sounds of words and underlying meanings come out stronger. He’s heavy, but he’s great.
Since I read “Spring And Fall: to a young girl” at the age of sixteen, I’ve felt with Hopkins a connection deeper than anything conveyed by the word “kinship”. I thrill to the identification with a soaring bird each time I read “To a Windhover”, and to the ultimate love and beauty that underlie all Manifestation, when I read “God’s Grandeur” — although the word and concept “God” has always seemed to me an unnecessary complication and, ultimately, an obscuration and distraction from that grand apprehension. I want to shout at Hopkins “Stop calling it ‘God’! Let yourself be open to the pure experience and wisdom! Let go of all those rules, all that verbiage, ideation, and dogma!” I totally understand his original attraction to Roman Catholicism, with its declaration of the Mystery and its recognition of grandeur. However, I’m mystified by his obsessive clinging to the tangled, and necrophilic apparatus of orthodoxy — but part of me understands it. Much as I’d rather not, I completely understand the sonnet that begins “No worst, there is none.” Though my Buddhist self eschews it, I am not yet totally removed from the self-hatred at the core of Christianity, in which as English-speakers, “Westerners”, we are all steeped.
“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.” cries from the depth of this self-hatred, but then goes further — to acceptance of its justice. Having already come to love and identify with Hopkins, I raged at this in! I got a “C” on a final exam at the U. Of Chicago that had this sonnet as an essay prompt — I couldn’t put together a coherent critique of it, nor leave it and get on with the rest of the exam.
Like thousands before me, I’ve felt closer to this really odd, truly sick, yet beautiful and brilliant mind than so many I’d be more comfortable with. I’ve wanted to jump into a time machine, sneak into his chamber and remonstrate with him about this acceptance of the notions of Original Sin and of a God who, after allowing the original event, then imposed the Supreme Sacrifice on his Only Begotten Son and — on top of all that — maintains the category of “the lost”, referred to in the penultimate line of “I wake . . .” What could such a being have to do with the glory of Manifestation? What sense is there in speaking of such an entity as “loving”, let alone “perfect”?
But, I have no time machine and I can easily envision great difficulty in reaching Hopkins, even had I one.
I love, embrace, and accept him as he is.
October 16, 2021
Arrow to the heart.
August 23, 2022
He's the best !
It's known GMH is unspeakably brilliant you don't need me for that it's so warm, reassuring to read these and rediscover where others have pinched lines. Contemporary highlight is the first stanza of The Lantern out of Doors -
Sometimes a lantern moves along the night,
That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?
which gives the title for the wonderful Seán Hewitt's just-released memoir, All Down Darkness Wide. I don't think it's too much a stretch to call Gerard a progenitor of queer aesthetics in poetry & I think one has only to look at what we're cautiously calling something like a Scottish revival at the moment to recognise the Hopkins in queer joy, in the unavoidably queer aesthetics of complexity, eruption, exuberance. This reread really rekindled the Deutschland for me which I Liked before but Oh my I am falling for it Heavy now what a masterpiece
Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or night, still higher,
With belled fire and the moth-soft Milky way,
What by your measure is the heaven of desire,
The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed what for the hearing?
Also the Heraclitean Fire poem is,,,, so desirable
O I suppose I'd also say I read the prose here the journal is quite sweet quite Wordsworthian in a way though GMH would dislike that comparison. There's an odd Socratic dialogue among Oxonians about What is Beauty which nearly worked though I was mostly going hmmm homoeroticism. I was surprised by his letters to John Henry Newman which to my shame I didn't know existed! they're curious!
He's endless he's here to stay and Thank the Lord for that
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.
It's known GMH is unspeakably brilliant you don't need me for that it's so warm, reassuring to read these and rediscover where others have pinched lines. Contemporary highlight is the first stanza of The Lantern out of Doors -
Sometimes a lantern moves along the night,
That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?
which gives the title for the wonderful Seán Hewitt's just-released memoir, All Down Darkness Wide. I don't think it's too much a stretch to call Gerard a progenitor of queer aesthetics in poetry & I think one has only to look at what we're cautiously calling something like a Scottish revival at the moment to recognise the Hopkins in queer joy, in the unavoidably queer aesthetics of complexity, eruption, exuberance. This reread really rekindled the Deutschland for me which I Liked before but Oh my I am falling for it Heavy now what a masterpiece
Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or night, still higher,
With belled fire and the moth-soft Milky way,
What by your measure is the heaven of desire,
The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed what for the hearing?
Also the Heraclitean Fire poem is,,,, so desirable
O I suppose I'd also say I read the prose here the journal is quite sweet quite Wordsworthian in a way though GMH would dislike that comparison. There's an odd Socratic dialogue among Oxonians about What is Beauty which nearly worked though I was mostly going hmmm homoeroticism. I was surprised by his letters to John Henry Newman which to my shame I didn't know existed! they're curious!
He's endless he's here to stay and Thank the Lord for that
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.
July 7, 2020
Hopkin's prose regarding prosody is, outside of Eliot, the best I've ever read.
You often hear 'this poet must be read aloud to understand him/her/they!' about all manner of poets.
Hopkins is the only poet I've encountered where this is actually true. There is something about the inner voice of a reader that is simply inexact; you must read his poems aloud, even if muttered; even if whispered.
He understood the tongue in a way primal way unlike all other poets in English.*
(*Which makes ladies sad that he probably wasn't into them.)
You often hear 'this poet must be read aloud to understand him/her/they!' about all manner of poets.
Hopkins is the only poet I've encountered where this is actually true. There is something about the inner voice of a reader that is simply inexact; you must read his poems aloud, even if muttered; even if whispered.
He understood the tongue in a way primal way unlike all other poets in English.*
(*Which makes ladies sad that he probably wasn't into them.)
November 23, 2023
The bottom line - obscure and overly complex, even for straightforward descriptions. An exhausting glut of poems on “the natural world.”
Hopkins was one of those English poets and artists of the 19th Century who “followed Cardinal Newman into the Church.” I recently read The Toys by Coventry Patmore, who was identified as “the first important English poet to follow Cardinal Newman into the Church” (1864). I don’t know how many important English Poets there were in the day (or how many were left stranded in Anglicanism) but I am presuming that leaves Hopkins as the second or third.
: Emily Augusta Andrews (1824-1862), John Everett Millais, the wife of Patmore and the subject of his romantic lyrical poem “Angel in the House” after her death. The bachelor Coventry was left with 6 children.
A man of the senses - nothing escapes his notice. He described the beingness of things around them and wants to describe them to others, and exploits his invention of "inscape" and "instress" to the maximum. Cryptic, unintelligible - even in "Tom’s Garland", a poem where he is literally meant to just be describing this guy, Tom, is absolutely impossible.
This edition included not only Manley's poetry, but his prose, diary entries, and selected letters. This was much more enjoyable. When he signed off “believe me your affectionate son” I thought was this was in reference to some incredulity or anger of his parents (they were not fans of his conversion), but later came to realise, after his letters to his friends (“believe me, your affectionate friend”) that this was his style, and I am thinking of adopting it.
I will say, that apart from the drudgery of descriptions of trees (and spending much time figuring out that maybe, yes, it is a tree he is talking about) there is a letter addressed to (the later cardinal, then saint) Rev John Henry Newman from 1866, begging if he could be itroduced to him at The Birmingham Oratory. "His mind is made up" and he is “anxious to become a Catholic” with desperate fervour, nevertheless having “long foreseen where the only consistent position wd. lie")… etc etc. I am completely charmed by this letter! I read it at least three times!
I didn't get bored by all of the the poems. But in general this was my overall feeling. Of note was where he describes Christ with his habitus, his face, his personality. Of course, this is important. Christ was flesh. When we describe another man we usually start off with how he looks. Manley described the feeling of "being oneself" and rejoices in God’s creation.
Also Manley really really likes Purcell's music. Like really.
Hopkins was one of those English poets and artists of the 19th Century who “followed Cardinal Newman into the Church.” I recently read The Toys by Coventry Patmore, who was identified as “the first important English poet to follow Cardinal Newman into the Church” (1864). I don’t know how many important English Poets there were in the day (or how many were left stranded in Anglicanism) but I am presuming that leaves Hopkins as the second or third.
: Emily Augusta Andrews (1824-1862), John Everett Millais, the wife of Patmore and the subject of his romantic lyrical poem “Angel in the House” after her death. The bachelor Coventry was left with 6 children.
A man of the senses - nothing escapes his notice. He described the beingness of things around them and wants to describe them to others, and exploits his invention of "inscape" and "instress" to the maximum. Cryptic, unintelligible - even in "Tom’s Garland", a poem where he is literally meant to just be describing this guy, Tom, is absolutely impossible.
This edition included not only Manley's poetry, but his prose, diary entries, and selected letters. This was much more enjoyable. When he signed off “believe me your affectionate son” I thought was this was in reference to some incredulity or anger of his parents (they were not fans of his conversion), but later came to realise, after his letters to his friends (“believe me, your affectionate friend”) that this was his style, and I am thinking of adopting it.
I will say, that apart from the drudgery of descriptions of trees (and spending much time figuring out that maybe, yes, it is a tree he is talking about) there is a letter addressed to (the later cardinal, then saint) Rev John Henry Newman from 1866, begging if he could be itroduced to him at The Birmingham Oratory. "His mind is made up" and he is “anxious to become a Catholic” with desperate fervour, nevertheless having “long foreseen where the only consistent position wd. lie")… etc etc. I am completely charmed by this letter! I read it at least three times!
I didn't get bored by all of the the poems. But in general this was my overall feeling. Of note was where he describes Christ with his habitus, his face, his personality. Of course, this is important. Christ was flesh. When we describe another man we usually start off with how he looks. Manley described the feeling of "being oneself" and rejoices in God’s creation.
Also Manley really really likes Purcell's music. Like really.
August 18, 2024
saving the letters and prose for another time, mostly wanted the opportunity to read the poetry bound and on paper.
recently, i found the annotated copy of god's grandeur from 11th grade english (i hold onto too much old schoolwork but it paid off in this moment so i certainly won't learn my lesson). anyway, i was so immediately captured by hopkins, the whole page is covered in rambling and hard-to-follow chunks of scribbles. not even my favorite of his poems (toss-up but ive been really taken by That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire... lately) i was obsessed with the soundplay- no other poet uses alliteration and internal rhyme like hopkins. compounded words which create whole new avenues of meaning and emphasis. it felt like a validation of what interested me most about writing, as well as what pre-occupied me when i felt really inspired to write.
hopkins kind of occupies this perfect sweet spot where he's so clearly shaped by and working within the vast history of "the canon" but also is this bridge into modernism's deconstruction of all those things he simply plays around with. one of the ways i think ive squared hopkin's catholicism (which is just so exhaustingly present in everything he writes) is that, clearly, hopkins late-in-life epiphanies around poetry wouldn't of been possible without devoting himself to the 7 year period of religious scholarly study. but also because it makes the poems hopkins wrote at the end of his life feel so much more tumultuous. anyway, disappointed there wasn't any criticism in this collection/edition, something to look for in the future.
recently, i found the annotated copy of god's grandeur from 11th grade english (i hold onto too much old schoolwork but it paid off in this moment so i certainly won't learn my lesson). anyway, i was so immediately captured by hopkins, the whole page is covered in rambling and hard-to-follow chunks of scribbles. not even my favorite of his poems (toss-up but ive been really taken by That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire... lately) i was obsessed with the soundplay- no other poet uses alliteration and internal rhyme like hopkins. compounded words which create whole new avenues of meaning and emphasis. it felt like a validation of what interested me most about writing, as well as what pre-occupied me when i felt really inspired to write.
hopkins kind of occupies this perfect sweet spot where he's so clearly shaped by and working within the vast history of "the canon" but also is this bridge into modernism's deconstruction of all those things he simply plays around with. one of the ways i think ive squared hopkin's catholicism (which is just so exhaustingly present in everything he writes) is that, clearly, hopkins late-in-life epiphanies around poetry wouldn't of been possible without devoting himself to the 7 year period of religious scholarly study. but also because it makes the poems hopkins wrote at the end of his life feel so much more tumultuous. anyway, disappointed there wasn't any criticism in this collection/edition, something to look for in the future.
May 3, 2022
4.9 / 5 stars
The beauty of poetry is, in my opinion, subjective. One can find it to be the ultimate height in literary genius, or one can find it to be pretentious writing. Although I admit some poetry makes my eyes roll, for the most part, I have a deep appreciation for it.
Anyone can write poetry, but it takes something special to make it beautiful in the eyes of any reader.
Hopkins is that something special.
He is now among one of my favourite writers - and not necessarily for his poetry - I quite enjoyed his prose, perhaps even more than the poetry.
Beauty is everywhere in his writings because he is determined to bring to life on paper the beauty he sees with his eyes. He recounts nature and his surroundings in a fresh and nearly abstract way - so that we're not just imagining it visually, we can also feel the essence in whatever he is writing about. That type of writing is worth praising.
Even his journal entries were interesting, and to me, unintentionally funny. I laughed at how he wrote an entire page worth of etymology of the word "horn", just because he happened to spot one somewhere. I was getting a better sense of his personality throughout these journal entries and that made reading his works feel much more personal.
I also enjoyed reading poetry from a priest - I don't often read works by Catholic authors, so this was a pleasant discovery indeed!
The beauty of poetry is, in my opinion, subjective. One can find it to be the ultimate height in literary genius, or one can find it to be pretentious writing. Although I admit some poetry makes my eyes roll, for the most part, I have a deep appreciation for it.
Anyone can write poetry, but it takes something special to make it beautiful in the eyes of any reader.
Hopkins is that something special.
He is now among one of my favourite writers - and not necessarily for his poetry - I quite enjoyed his prose, perhaps even more than the poetry.
Beauty is everywhere in his writings because he is determined to bring to life on paper the beauty he sees with his eyes. He recounts nature and his surroundings in a fresh and nearly abstract way - so that we're not just imagining it visually, we can also feel the essence in whatever he is writing about. That type of writing is worth praising.
Even his journal entries were interesting, and to me, unintentionally funny. I laughed at how he wrote an entire page worth of etymology of the word "horn", just because he happened to spot one somewhere. I was getting a better sense of his personality throughout these journal entries and that made reading his works feel much more personal.
I also enjoyed reading poetry from a priest - I don't often read works by Catholic authors, so this was a pleasant discovery indeed!
May 10, 2023
His genius was in the foundery of new words: heartsprings, hornlight, flake-leaves... he had the creators touch, a green wand brandished like a sprig that imparts new life, as God touches Adam and Eve to create the human race, he touches two words to create another, and with it a beautiful new realisation of two existing things that transcends them both.
The final poem in the book, the unfragmented or unfinished 'Epithalamion' particularly came alive before my eyes, like I'd walked in upon that beautiful scene.
The final poem in the book, the unfragmented or unfinished 'Epithalamion' particularly came alive before my eyes, like I'd walked in upon that beautiful scene.
January 29, 2023
Old-fashioned and overly religious, but his words really resonate with me.
(And for better or worse I'll never forget my Chaucer professor quoting Pied Beauty at me when I told him I preferred the Clerk to the Merchant or the Squire: "All things counter, original, spare, strange". Apparently, in all his years of teaching and asking which character we'd most like to date, I was the first student to choose the Clerk.)
(And for better or worse I'll never forget my Chaucer professor quoting Pied Beauty at me when I told him I preferred the Clerk to the Merchant or the Squire: "All things counter, original, spare, strange". Apparently, in all his years of teaching and asking which character we'd most like to date, I was the first student to choose the Clerk.)
Read
August 5, 2023I think I am just not well read enough in poetry to really appreciate this. There is just something about this style of writing along with the topics he covers (religion, nature) that make my eyes roll into the back of my head. I may try and return to this in the future but it was wholly uninteresting to me.
Grade: UR because I am not the target audience and feel unprepared to rate it
Recommended for: People who like poetry…? idk
Grade: UR because I am not the target audience and feel unprepared to rate it
Recommended for: People who like poetry…? idk
October 4, 2023
GMH is a singular poet. His command of the English language and its music and rhythms is unique, while the emotions he expresses spring from universal places. Speaking personally, I ruminate on his poems and dwell with them as my preferred means of consuming them. If you haven’t thought of GMH since you read one of his poems in a first-year anthology, I encourage you to reconnect with his work and this little edition is perfect for doing that.
February 23, 2018
Manly Hopkins is a wonderful poet. Most of his poems are written from a Christian perspective and consequently their content is frequently misaligned from my own worldview; nonetheless, his unique pattern of rhyming and meter brings them alive. Something I dip into every now and then.
February 5, 2020
The inventor of sprung rhythm. His poetry is to traditional prosody what Bop is to swing jazz. And then there's the earthiness in contrast to his Catholic metaphysics and the despair in conflict with his faith. A poet's poet.
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