17 June 2016
In earlier posts on this blog related to my year of poetic “quiet times,” I have already reflected on how poetry is the ideal medium for considering God, i.e. for theology. God being, by definition, beyond our explanation, it is only appropriate that God be explored in a medium that embraces impression, experience, and mystery rather than explication.
It doesn’t always work, though. This month I have been reading Gerard Manly Hopkins. Perfect, right? The Jesuit priest who nevertheless wrote daring poetry in a ground-breaking style that shattered the staid, plodding Victorian verse of his time. And all his poetry was religious! All of it! I mean, didn’t he burn all of his secular poetry once he became a priest and vow that he would only write poetry that his religious superiors approved? It couldn’t get any better, could it?
Um.
I’ve realized I don’t actually care for Hopkins. He really is a brilliant stylist – no argument there. And some of his poems, especially those like “Carrion Comfort” that struggle with depression, are minor masterpieces. But – forgive me, every one of my college English professors – most of the time he seems to be saying some very dull stuff. The first poem in my collection (The Wreck of the Deutschland) is his maudlin elegy to five Franciscan nuns who drowned in a shipwreck, an event that is way sadder than the drowning of all the sailors who were also on that ship, what with the nuns being virgins and religious and all that. I skipped that one this time through. I’ve read it before. But this morning was his lengthy meditation on how the Virgin Mary is like air. Really. Or take his perhaps most often anthologized poem:
The Windhover To Christ our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king- Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here   No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
It is, without question, a tour-de-force of imagery and poetic language, sung brokenly in halting rhythms that capture the swoop and dive of the falcon. But – and I can’t believe I’m even asking this – what does it mean? Well, in terms of summarizing its content, I see three options. The first is charitable, the second neutral, and the third cynical. In order, they are:
            1.   I saw a falcon today. It was glorious, and it made me feel the same glory I feel when I consider Christ my King.
            2.   I saw a falcon today, and I wrote this poem. Then I tacked Christ onto a subtitle, because I’m, you know, a priest.
            3.   I saw a falcon today. Look what I can do with words.
The thing is, none of the above is particularly profound. Even the charitable summary has basically the same import as a motivational poster in a Catholic classroom. The poem is well worth reading, but it’s actually more worth memorizing and quoting. It’s in mouthing the rhythms that we feel the poem’s heart – whether we actually follow the meaning or not. It’s a lot like Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Bells,” which was so beloved on the 19th century elocution circuit. Again, a tour-de-force of poetic language, but if you ask about its meaning, you end up with this:
            1.         Different bells make different sounds. Look what I can do with words.
I’ll be done with Hopkins soon. His corpus is not large, no doubt on account of burning all his cool pre-clerical stuff (and aren’t we glad Donne didn’t do that?), so I’m not complaining. But it still can’t come too soon for me. I know I’m supposed to love Hopkins as the only truly creative Victorian. I just don’t.

You know what’s worse? I kind of like Tennyson.