The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins

by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dana Gioia (Foreword), Margaret R. Ellsberg (Editor)

How did a Catholic priest who died a failure become one of the world's greatest poets? Discover in his own words the struggle for faith that gave birth to some of the best spiritual poetry of all time.

Gerard Manley Hopkins deserves his place among the greatest poets in the English language. He ranks seventh among the most frequently reprinted English-language poets, surpassed only by Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Dickinson, Yeats, and Wordsworth. Yet when the English Jesuit priest died of typhoid fever at age forty-four, he considered his life a failure. He never would have suspected that his poems, which would not be published for another twenty-nine years, would eventually change the course of modern poetry and influence such poets as W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Geoffrey Hill, and Seamus Heaney. Like his contemporaries Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, Hopkins revolutionized poetic language.

And yet we love Hopkins not only for his literary genius but for the hard-won faith that finds expression in his verse. Who else has captured the thunderous voice of God and the grandeur of his creation on the written page as Hopkins has? Seamlessly weaving together selections from Hopkins's poems, letters, journals, and sermons, Peggy Ellsberg lets the poet tell the story of a life-long struggle with faith that gave birth to some of the best poetry of all time. Even readers who spurn religious language will find in Hopkins a refreshing, liberating way to see God's hand at work in the world.

Genres: Poetry, Biography, Spirituality, Religion, Christian, Catholic, Faith

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Gerard 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.

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was born to an affluent, Anglican English family in the 19th century. He was bright and talented and had the choice of any career he wanted. But he converted to Roman Catholicism which in 19th century England closed many doors. His family was saddened to see him apparently throw his life away as a Jesuit priest. As a priest, he also forbade himself the writing of poetry and burned all his early work.

Hopkins was not suited to the kinds of work the Jesuits gave him. Despite having done outstandingly at Oxford, he did poorly in seminary and was therefore given the lowliest of jobs. Miserable, he began to write poetry again, this time to recreate the way in which he encountered God in the world and in the Catholic Mass. For Hopkins, transubstantiation was a critical necessity for his faith-not only religious but in the finding of meaning in the world. The fact that the word could be sacramental, effecting real change was essential to his belief system. And his poetry reflects that passionate belief in the power of language.

Read only by a few friends (and then not liked or understood), Hopkins felt isolated as a poet as well as he was as a priest. He explained to one reader that even if the reader could not understand all the content, he should allow himself to enjoy the beauty of the words, the sensation of the poem. Hopkins said that often he allowed himself the pleasure of the beauty of poetry regardless of the meaning. But his "sprung rhythm," a two-foot stressed foot, was difficult for his contemporaries to follow and the strangeness of his language alienated them.

Hopkins died young, of typhoid carried in the plumbing of his antiquated church residence in Ireland. He was unknown and felt like a failure as a teacher and misunderstood as a poet.

Published by a friend nearly 30 years after his death, Hopkins became a huge sensation, profoundly influencing a generation of Modernist poets. Today, he continues to be considered one of the great poets.

The Gospel in Gerad Manley Hopkins combines his poetry, journals, letters, and sermons, along with some biographical notes, to create the sense of this remarkable poet's relationship to God and how it deeply influenced his poetry as well as his life. Like the Franciscan Duns Scotus (by whom Hopkins was influenced), Hopkins believed that God dwelt in the created world and that we encounter him everywhere but most especially in nature. While the letters cry out for understanding, the poems sing out a joy of God immanent in the world, even in its tragedies. In The Wreck of the Deutschland, an early masterpiece, Hopkins addresses the tragedy of the drowning of five German nuns in a ship disaster. Where Voltaire was shaken out of his faith by the Lisbon earthquake, Hopkins finds the consolation of God even in the seemingly meaningless disaster of a shipwreck.

Much as I enjoyed learning more about Hopkins through his letters and more about his faith through his sermons, I was most excited by the poetry itself. The editor, Margaret Ellsberg, has insightful commentary that I found helpful but the experience of the poetry was the greatest gift of this collection. The sheer beauty of the words, rich and, yes, strange, the rhythms and the images were all amazing. I could only read a few at a time and finished feeling word drunk and grateful.

As a Catholic, I especially appreciated how Hopkins found such joy in God as witnessed in the Catholic Mass. It revitalized my own appreciation of the Eucharist. But even aside from religion, Hopkins is a gift of the incredible beauty and power and potential of language to lift us up and bring us face to face with the world in all its richness, beautiful, life-giving and, yes, sometimes tragic.

I want to thank LibraryThing for giving me this wonderful volume in exchange for an honest review. I'm sure I'll reread the poems (of which I only was familiar with a few) many times and hopefully share them with others. Reading Hopkins is a powerful and exciting experience. I've already passed the volume along to my son. Hopefully many people will continue to discover the richness of Hopkins' work through Ellsberg's well-selected and annotated volume.

[David Huff · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's uncanny how often great genius and artistry are borne out of lives that are much too short, and often filled with trouble or turmoil of various kinds. I think of Mozart, for instance, and Chopin, and now must add the spiritually powerful poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. An Englishman who paid a great personal price to pursue a vocation as a Jesuit priest, Hopkins faced constant health challenges, difficult work situations, and tragically died at the young age of 44.

After burning the initial poetic efforts of his early years, Hopkins continued to follow his heart's passion, and wrote to the end of his life, in his own, very individualistic poetic style, of the glory and grandeur of God. Though he crafted a unique, "sprung rhythm" style, whose rich, haunting, and sometimes mysterious beauty needs to be read aloud for full appreciation, Hopkins died thinking he was a massive failure. It would be 29 years later before his poetry was even published.

And, yet, he is now among the top 10 most often published English poets, behind only the likes of Yeats, Wordsworth, and Shakespeare. This was an enjoyable book to read, not only for the poetry, but also the letters and journal writings that brought such insight to Hopkins' life.

Here was a young man who saw God in all things, in all aspects of His creation, and from his troubled life wrote poetry that, in symphonies of verbal lush harmonies, sings of the glory of God.

To close, one of his best examples:

"The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."
-- "God's Grandeur"

[Tamara Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm grateful for any opportunity I have to learn an artist through his life story. There are drawbacks, of course. Sometimes it's hard to look a hero in the proverbial eye through their letters and journal entries. It's hard to hear the doubt, insecurity, and suffering of the people who've introduced so much beauty into the world. Oh my goodness, Gerard Manley Hopkins' poems are beautiful. And his suffering was real. My favorite part of the book is still the poems, which I guess I could read in his collected works, but I've learned that I often prefer to read and study artists' work within the context of their everyday lives.

[Philemon - · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fine compendium handily wraps everything to do with Gerard Manley Hopkins into a mere 250 pages: his complete oeuvre of 49 poems, his biography, letters, journals, spiritual writings, and a sprinkling of sermons, as well as fine critical commentary by Ms. Ellsberg.

A quibble: the book proposes Hopkins as a "universally acknowledged" major English poet, "surpassed only by Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Dickinson, Yeats, and Wordsworth." Really? Although sharing company as a poet of ecstasy (Whitman, Swinburne and Hart Crane come quickly to mind), Hopkins is certainly unsurpassed as a poetic master of surface energy, powered by his sprung rhythm and garnished by neologisms. But imagine that surface away, if you can, and how much would be left? How much articulated philosophy? How much thematic depth?

If you were in a seminar room with the ghost of Robert Lowell and he barked, "Hopkins, major or minor?" and you answered the former, would the ghost not simply bellow, "Wrong!"

As I perused this enjoyable book, I came to Hopkins's chef d'oeuvre, The Wreck of the Deutschland. But as I slogged through its 280 lines, it changed from a masterpiece in the making to something else, an extremity of excesses, a piling up of dissonances. Afterwards I wondered whether it was it or me, so I was relieved to read that Robert Bridges, Hopkins's best friend and later Poet Laureate of England, had also termed it "presumptious jugglery" and concluded by saying "not for any money" would he read it again.

But don't get me wrong, I love Hopkins's contribution to prosody, not to mention his sad, devoted life; and certain lines, particularly from his sonnets, will never fail to raise hairs on end.

[Chrystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I continue to sing the praises of this series published by Plough. I am savoring each volume slowly and have been edified tremendously. Thank you, Plough Publishing!

Hopkins' story is a sad one, a life of genius cut short, a man who suffered depression and what is now thought to be Crohn's disease, suffering in both body and soul, misunderstood in his lifetime, unfulfilled in his vocation as a Jesuit priest. His last words on his deathbed as he suffered from typhoid and peritonitis were "I am so happy" whispered over and over.

He is assuredly happy now, especially if he can see the fruits of his suffering, the gifts of his poems that have brought joy and ecstasy to countless millions, and achieved what he set out to do with his life, which was "all for the glory of God."

[Joseph J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One story from these poems, letters, journals and sermons stands out to me. Six months before ordination, in a practice sermon before fellow Jesuits, Gerard Manley Hopkins preached the Loaves and Fishes Gospel story. In a literary and poetic effort, Hopkins repeated Christ's command "Make the men sit down" several times. I loved it, but in a letter to a friend Hopkins recalled his audience "laughing prodigiously" and the repetition making his Jesuit brothers "roll in their chairs." (What would they have thought of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream"?) This underscores diminutive (5'2") and sickly Hopkins, standing before his community knowing that, because of lackluster grades, he will never rise in the Jesuit ranks. Indeed the ill-plagued Hopkins will serve a variety of inner city, working class parishes. For this he had abandoned a life of privilege and comfort, and had endured disappointment and hostility from his Anglican parents in his conversion to Catholicism. His letter to his father at that point is pleading and determined in tone. At that time he abandoned poetry and burned his work. Returning to poetry years later, he turned the literary world on its head. My advice: The poems are best read ALOUD! James Dickey called Hopkins' "The Wreck of the Deutschland" the most important poem of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Verse fourteen raised my goose pimples! Yet, one contemporary slammed the epic work-memorializing the martyrdom of several nuns-saying "I wish those nuns had stayed at home." Before reading this work, I was familiar with Hopkins' thin face and one work, "God's Grandeur." I cannot help comparison with novelist turned monk Thomas Merton; that orphaned convert did not have to suffer a father's disappointment or a community's ridicule. Hopkins was an outcast in life and a tragic early death; today he ranks in the top ten poets in the English language. I read this in a week of pipe bombs and anti-Semitic/racial hatred. It is not to be put away, but returned to for its hope and beauty and view of creation.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of Hopkins poetry, journal entries, sermons and reflections, with short biographical chapters. The Introduction is by Dana Gioia.
The poetry stands out, and the short chapters and introductory material very good.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: An exploration of the life and faith of Gerard Manley Hopkins through commentary and a selection of his poetry, letters, journal entries, and sermons.

The life of Gerard Manley Hopkins seems to me a life of startling contrasts. He writes wonderfully vibrant poetry using innovative rhythms--poems that often are celebration of the glory of God evident in the creation. At the same time, he is a devout Jesuit, whose submission to the order meant largely a life as priest and academic examiner in slums of Liverpool, Glasgow, London and Dublin. He died of typhoid contracted from antiquated plumbing. We follow the man who burnt his early poems when he converted to Catholicism and entered the Jesuits, whose life was shaped by the Exercises of St. Ignatius, whose passion was God's glory, and the incarnation of Christ, revealed afresh in every Eucharist. We also see a man deeply torn between his artistic sensibilities and the physically and psychically crushing routines of most of his life as a Jesuit, to which he seemed ill-suited, that comes through in the anguished "Terrible Sonnets."

Margaret Ellsberg weaves the narrative of Hopkins life and faith through a combination of commentary, and selections of poetry, letters, sermons, and journals throughout the course of his short life. Because there are only 49 of his poems extant, many of these are included in this selection, set in the context of his life. It is fascinating that Robert Bridges, who subsequently published his works, struggled to make sense of them and found at least one sufficiently difficult that (in Hopkins words) "you wd. not for any money read my poem again ("The Wreck of the Deutschland"). Ellsberg's work gives us clues, sometimes from Hopkins himself, to the understanding of his poetry, and that is what makes this work most attractive, along with the selections of his poetry.

As much as I love Hopkins poetry (my favorite is "As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame"), the title of this work (part of a series sharing "The Gospel In...") mystifies me in some ways because the gospel may have evoked praise and wonder with regard to God's work in the world but mostly despair with regard to his own life. Wonder and devotion there is in great measure, but a sense of peace, of wholeness seems lacking. There is the dutiful fulfillment of assignments that seem poorly fitted to who he is, which makes one wonder why he chose the Jesuits and the priesthood. Compounding his struggle was physical weakness, and perhaps a melancholy character. But gospel also implies "good news", hope for us in our fragile humanity. Only on his deathbed does he find some peace, as he whispers over and over, "I'm so happy, I'm so happy."

Perhaps there is something of temperament in all of this, an artist not fully at home in his world, torn by the tension between "God's Grandeur" and the ugliness of much of what he endured around him. One wonders if different choices or different assignments might have made a difference. Or was it something "unreconciled" in his "gospel" that seemed to result in a life of great devotion but little contentment or peace?

Yet we have this great poetry, much of it an effervescing abundance captured in the fourteen lines of a sonnet. Hopkins life remains an enigma to me, but I can thank his Maker and mine for the gift of his writing. I leave you with "God's Grandeur"

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

____________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer Program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

[David Crumm · Rating 5 out of 5]

My father, the late Rev. Donald Crumm, read Hopkins' poetry in the 1950s as he was discerning a call from the ministry. My father was a U.S. Navy veteran of service in WWII in the Aleutian Islands. After the war, he worked in a bank, but read widely and somehow Hopkins' poetry played a role in his feeling a call to ministry. Dad eventually went to Drew seminary and served a long career as a Michigan United Methodist pastor.

All my life, as a journalist, I wondered what he found in Hopkins. The poet's work seemed opaque to me: dense and, to my mind, rambling and unclear. Perhaps I didn't understand the context. Perhaps I couldn't parse the poetry.

Now comes this marvelous volume from Plough. I've enjoyed this book over about a month, reading a bit each day. The format is fascinating to me because it intersperses short biographical notes with some of his letters and journals—and then we get the most famous poetry. With this kind of context, I'm now gaining new insights into the poetry itself. One obvious connection with my father is that he was fascinated, during his lifetime in the Great Lakes and in the Navy, with ships and shipwrecks—and Hopkins was similar drawn to imagery of shipwrecks.

Now at age 61, I'm rediscovering Hopkins, thanks to this volume, in a new way. I enjoyed reading bits of it through May.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This mostly flies on the strength of Hopkins’ dense and dizzying poetry. The editors’ essays were pretty interesting; Hopkins’ sermons and letters less so (too rambling and sad?)

Probs the first time I’ve understood - and even marvelled at - ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland.’

[Jim Gallen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had heard of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the English Jesuit poet, but knew little about him so I picked up “The Gospel In Gerard Manley Hopkins” in hopes of learning more. I was not disappointed. This work consists of selections from Hopkins’ poems, letters to friends, journal entries, spiritual writings, including notes from his sermons, and biographical information.

I found a Nineteenth Century contemporary of Blessed John Henry Newman who converted from Oxford Movement Anglicanism to Catholicism and who meshed his poetic talents into his Jesuit ministry during his 44 years of life. That meshing was a challenge for Hopkins who burned his poems when entering the order and only wrote again under instructions from his superior. Although the last five years of his life, wasted years in his opinion, were spent teaching Latin grammar, translation and composition and advanced Greek composition at University College in Dublin most of his priestly ministry was devoted to parishes serving poor, mostly Irish congregations ill-suited to benefit from his learning. In the end it was the unsanitary water in his residence from which he contracted typhoid and died in 1889.

Biography is only one of the four offerings of this tome. Each reader can choose the one or more that attracts him. Hopkins is known for his poetry so I will start with that. My tastes in poetry are rather pedestrian. I enjoy poems that I can easily understand but not ones that lead me guessing their meanings. I find enjoyment is some of Hopkins’ nature poems, such as “Spring”
“Nothing is so beautiful as spring-
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush.” P. 100
Others of his poems are harder for me to understand but I take consolation in his own observation that “My verse is less to be read than heard”. I was reading it so that may explain some of my problem. Hopkins has been called by some the greatest poet in the English language so I attribute my limited appreciation to my own shortcomings, not Hopkins.

That leaves his journals, letters and spiritual writings to seize the readers’ interest and that is where I found my pearls of great price. His explanations as to why he felt compelled to leave the Church of England for the Catholic Church help me understand the journey of a friend who also “swam the Tiber” as well as that of Blessed Newman. I find theological insights that had previously evaded my grasp. The triune hierarchy of beauty of the body, genius and character stimulate thought while the comment that the Pharisee was favorably inclined toward Jesus when he gave him the coin of tribute presents that story in a new light.
I am glad I read “The Gospel In Gerard Manley Hopkins”. It left me with a deeper understanding of the religious milieu that produced giants like Hopkins and Newman. I now have an familiarity with his life and have learned more about God and the Gospel. That makes for a edifying work.

I did receive a free copy of this book without an obligation to post a review.

[Amy Reasoner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Hopkins poems to my sons our fall term of school, and I bought this collection both for the selection of poems to read aloud and for the additional information that would hopefully help me understand and teach them. But I have to say, that even after (finally!) finishing this book that Hopkins' with often still baffles me. Some of his poems, like "God's grandeur" are so lovely and really stir summering in my soul, and I think I can glimpse what he's trying to do with language. But so many more of them are confusing and difficult. It's both helpful and sad to discover that Hopkins's peers often felt the same way about his work, but I'm still glad that it's been preserved for us.

[Peggy Haslar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must for Hopkins lovers, this book layers engaging biographical essays, letters, sermons and journal entries for an insider's look at the life of the convert-poet-priest, unpublished in his lifetime, whose sorrows were bravely borne and whose poetry after his death influenced the next generation of poets in a permanent way. Very moving.

[Yan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful edition, with Hopkins' own drawings. How delightful to spend some time in a summer afternoon to read a page or two of Hopkins' deep meditation and enjoy his particular drawings of nature and landscape. His views are both intimate and distanced, retaining a sense of non-aggressive embrace.

[Kris Lundgaard · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good selection of letter, poems, and s biographical sketch. The title is a bit misleading, since their isn't much explicit discussion of the gospel and how it shines through his life or work--but it is certainly there.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Hopkins is a gift.

Read the review by Ellie. She nails it.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will write a review later!