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Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works
This authoritative edition brings together all of Hopkins's poetry and a generous selection of his prose writings to explore the essence of his work and thinking.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) was one of the most innovative of nineteenth-century poets. During his tragically short life he strove to reconcile his religious and artistic vocations, and this edition demonstrates the range of his interests. It includes all his poetry, from best-known works
such as "The Wreck of the Deutschland" and "The Windhover" to translations, foreign language poems, plays, and verse fragments, and the recently discovered poem "Consule Jones". In addition there are excerpts from Hopkins's journals, letters, and spiritual writings. The poems are printed in
chronological order to show Hopkins's changing preoccupations, and all the texts have been established from original manuscripts.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) was one of the most innovative of nineteenth-century poets. During his tragically short life he strove to reconcile his religious and artistic vocations, and this edition demonstrates the range of his interests. It includes all his poetry, from best-known works
such as "The Wreck of the Deutschland" and "The Windhover" to translations, foreign language poems, plays, and verse fragments, and the recently discovered poem "Consule Jones". In addition there are excerpts from Hopkins's journals, letters, and spiritual writings. The poems are printed in
chronological order to show Hopkins's changing preoccupations, and all the texts have been established from original manuscripts.
480 pages, Paperback
First published October 24, 2002
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About the author
Gerard Manley Hopkins
225 books240 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 57 reviews
February 18, 2023
The most exquisite and beautiful poetry, so rhythmic, so lyrical, so profound and transcendent. He makes up his own words, creates his own language, and it works. I use his writing in meditation along with other poets. He was and is transformative in my reading and my creating and my dreaming.
Currently reading
September 7, 2011Way back when, in the days before Evening All Afternoon, I wrote about being so struck by the unexpected meter and richly textured language of Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem "Pied Beauty" while, of all things, taking a standardized test, that I wrote down the first line of the poem on a piece of scrap paper and shoved it into my pocket. My discovery of Hopkins probably still takes my personal prize for most intense aesthetic experience in a testing environment; never mind that I got the answer wrong. Ever since then I've meant to explore his poetry more fully, and the time has finally come...although I must admit that it's coming slowly.
Not that "Pied Beauty" is an uncharacteristic example of his oeuvre. Far from it: if anything, I've been surprised by the extent to which every poem of Hopkins's seems to be utterly representative of the rest of his work. They are nearly all, like "Pied Beauty," deeply attuned to the natural world, and, like "Pied Beauty," almost all those written after 1875 are in Hopkins's characteristic sprung rhythm. (Sprung rhythm differs from normal English-language verse in that it counts total stresses per line rather than total syllables. So technically, you could have as many syllables in a poetic foot as you wanted, as long as only one of them were stressed—a trick beloved of Bob Dylan. You could also potentially have many single-syllable feet in a row.) Almost without exception, Hopkins's word choice is as rich and suggestive as in "Pied Beauty," and his syntax is often much more complex. And, possibly most defining of all, his fervent, sometimes tortured Catholicism is the raison d'être of all but a small handful of these verses.
My slow progress is, I think, down to a combination of the last two qualities: the sheer density and unexpectedness of Hopkins's imagery is a plus, but a challenging plus. The religiosity, I must admit, gives this religious agnostic pause when consumed in larger doses than a poem or two at a time. I can't help but feel this is a personal flaw (a great book can be about anything, after all, and I read plenty of novels by and about Christians), but there you have it. Fantastic imagery, compelling rhythm, lots and lots of Christ and the Christian god.
Yes, I chose to pull this poem because of the odd image of God's grandeur "oozing" oilily; there are a few things here that might tie into the disgust project. Before I go there, though, a little diversion into Hopkins's odd placement in time; to me, he almost seems to belong to any era except the late 1800s, when this poem was actually written. The sprung meter, although pioneered by Hopkins in modern verse, was something he claimed to have gleaned from old English folk songs and nursery rhymes. This, together with his love of alliteration, archaic word forms ("reck," "trod") and almost kenning-like compound forms (no great example in this poem, but "The Windhover"'s "dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon" leaps to mind) give his poetry a faux-medieval cast. The oddness and experimentalism of his versification strikes me as Modernist. The way in which he cleaves to the natural world in the face of human corruption ("nature is never spent; / There lives the dearest freshness deep down things") strikes me as high Romantic, as does the sheer intensity of his spiritual angst. I suppose the religious piety itself is the only thing about Hopkins that comes off as particularly Victorian, if you don't count the seven years during which he refused to write poetry out of a sense of duty to his priestly order.
It makes that test question very devious, is all I'm saying.
In greater seriousness, what about the grandeur of God massing and oozing like oil? The image communicates well the pervasiveness Hopkins is getting at here—that the entirety of Creation is so super-saturated with God's grandeur that it seeps out of the world like oil from a crushed olive, and masses as it "gathers to a greatness." Like a staining sauce about to drip onto the carpet, or pitch seeping out of a wounded tree. So yes, hard to ignore, certainly. But also kind of gross, don't you think? Maybe "gross" is going too far, but disturbing. There's something disquieting about the idea of any substance "oozing" out of every surface around one, regardless of what that substance is. But come to think of it, there's also something a bit contradictory about even trying to imagine "grandeur" that "oozes." Grandeur as a bright flash "like shining from shook foil," yes: light is usually conceptualized as clean and illuminating, both Godlike qualities. It's hard to be contaminated by light, or even by fire. But oil, especially oil described as "oozing" (as opposed to, say, anointing), strikes me as both dirty and obscuring, more like the "blearing" and "smearing" of trade and toil a few lines later, than like anything grand or numinous.
I mean, personally, I quite like this image of an oozing, oily god. A very tactile, yet slippery god. One of the things that drew me to "Pied Beauty" was Hopkins's celebration of an imperfect, impure-seeming creation:
Elsewhere, though—even elsewhere in this poem!—Hopkins seems to hew to the more traditional opposition between "freshness" of the natural world and man's "smudge" and "smell." The Holy Ghost broods with "bright wings," which associate the divine with both nature (birds' wings) and the light that flames out "like shining from shook foil" in the second line. Even in "Pied Beauty," my reading is that Hopkins is able to appreciate the odd and "fickle" because they are backed by the everlasting, uncorrupted being "whose beauty is past change."
So to associate the divine itself with oozing oil caught me off guard. I'm not sure what to do with it, but I quite like it. Maybe it's meant to suggest the dangerous aspect of God; after all, the following line is "Why do men then now not reck his rod?" where "reck" denotes concern or alarm, and the divine "rod" brings to mind that of Aaron (which turns miraculously to a serpent when laid before the Pharoah, then consumes all the rods of the Pharoah's sorcerers). So maybe the contaminating and dangerous elements of an "oozing" substance are reflected in the aspects of God that test and punish. "Crushed," in the Biblical tradition, brings to mind the serpent crushed under Christ's heel, which is echoed by the mention of the rod, and even something "flaming out" with purifying fire could be dangerous. These hints of threat and punishment seem an odd fit for Hopkins's theology, which at first flush appears more of the "Commune with the goodness of Nature and you're communing with the goodness of God" variety, but it's probably more complex than that. After all, the man did write a long poem appreciating the divine powers behind a shipwreck.
So, I continue along my slow way. I'll leave you with Hopkins being slightly more predictable but no less lingually delicious about the degeneration of humanity; I don't need to comment in-depth except that the penultimate line is one of my favorites in Hopkin's catalog thus far.
Not that "Pied Beauty" is an uncharacteristic example of his oeuvre. Far from it: if anything, I've been surprised by the extent to which every poem of Hopkins's seems to be utterly representative of the rest of his work. They are nearly all, like "Pied Beauty," deeply attuned to the natural world, and, like "Pied Beauty," almost all those written after 1875 are in Hopkins's characteristic sprung rhythm. (Sprung rhythm differs from normal English-language verse in that it counts total stresses per line rather than total syllables. So technically, you could have as many syllables in a poetic foot as you wanted, as long as only one of them were stressed—a trick beloved of Bob Dylan. You could also potentially have many single-syllable feet in a row.) Almost without exception, Hopkins's word choice is as rich and suggestive as in "Pied Beauty," and his syntax is often much more complex. And, possibly most defining of all, his fervent, sometimes tortured Catholicism is the raison d'être of all but a small handful of these verses.
My slow progress is, I think, down to a combination of the last two qualities: the sheer density and unexpectedness of Hopkins's imagery is a plus, but a challenging plus. The religiosity, I must admit, gives this religious agnostic pause when consumed in larger doses than a poem or two at a time. I can't help but feel this is a personal flaw (a great book can be about anything, after all, and I read plenty of novels by and about Christians), but there you have it. Fantastic imagery, compelling rhythm, lots and lots of Christ and the Christian god.
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 eastwards, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Yes, I chose to pull this poem because of the odd image of God's grandeur "oozing" oilily; there are a few things here that might tie into the disgust project. Before I go there, though, a little diversion into Hopkins's odd placement in time; to me, he almost seems to belong to any era except the late 1800s, when this poem was actually written. The sprung meter, although pioneered by Hopkins in modern verse, was something he claimed to have gleaned from old English folk songs and nursery rhymes. This, together with his love of alliteration, archaic word forms ("reck," "trod") and almost kenning-like compound forms (no great example in this poem, but "The Windhover"'s "dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon" leaps to mind) give his poetry a faux-medieval cast. The oddness and experimentalism of his versification strikes me as Modernist. The way in which he cleaves to the natural world in the face of human corruption ("nature is never spent; / There lives the dearest freshness deep down things") strikes me as high Romantic, as does the sheer intensity of his spiritual angst. I suppose the religious piety itself is the only thing about Hopkins that comes off as particularly Victorian, if you don't count the seven years during which he refused to write poetry out of a sense of duty to his priestly order.
It makes that test question very devious, is all I'm saying.
In greater seriousness, what about the grandeur of God massing and oozing like oil? The image communicates well the pervasiveness Hopkins is getting at here—that the entirety of Creation is so super-saturated with God's grandeur that it seeps out of the world like oil from a crushed olive, and masses as it "gathers to a greatness." Like a staining sauce about to drip onto the carpet, or pitch seeping out of a wounded tree. So yes, hard to ignore, certainly. But also kind of gross, don't you think? Maybe "gross" is going too far, but disturbing. There's something disquieting about the idea of any substance "oozing" out of every surface around one, regardless of what that substance is. But come to think of it, there's also something a bit contradictory about even trying to imagine "grandeur" that "oozes." Grandeur as a bright flash "like shining from shook foil," yes: light is usually conceptualized as clean and illuminating, both Godlike qualities. It's hard to be contaminated by light, or even by fire. But oil, especially oil described as "oozing" (as opposed to, say, anointing), strikes me as both dirty and obscuring, more like the "blearing" and "smearing" of trade and toil a few lines later, than like anything grand or numinous.
I mean, personally, I quite like this image of an oozing, oily god. A very tactile, yet slippery god. One of the things that drew me to "Pied Beauty" was Hopkins's celebration of an imperfect, impure-seeming creation:
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.
Elsewhere, though—even elsewhere in this poem!—Hopkins seems to hew to the more traditional opposition between "freshness" of the natural world and man's "smudge" and "smell." The Holy Ghost broods with "bright wings," which associate the divine with both nature (birds' wings) and the light that flames out "like shining from shook foil" in the second line. Even in "Pied Beauty," my reading is that Hopkins is able to appreciate the odd and "fickle" because they are backed by the everlasting, uncorrupted being "whose beauty is past change."
So to associate the divine itself with oozing oil caught me off guard. I'm not sure what to do with it, but I quite like it. Maybe it's meant to suggest the dangerous aspect of God; after all, the following line is "Why do men then now not reck his rod?" where "reck" denotes concern or alarm, and the divine "rod" brings to mind that of Aaron (which turns miraculously to a serpent when laid before the Pharoah, then consumes all the rods of the Pharoah's sorcerers). So maybe the contaminating and dangerous elements of an "oozing" substance are reflected in the aspects of God that test and punish. "Crushed," in the Biblical tradition, brings to mind the serpent crushed under Christ's heel, which is echoed by the mention of the rod, and even something "flaming out" with purifying fire could be dangerous. These hints of threat and punishment seem an odd fit for Hopkins's theology, which at first flush appears more of the "Commune with the goodness of Nature and you're communing with the goodness of God" variety, but it's probably more complex than that. After all, the man did write a long poem appreciating the divine powers behind a shipwreck.
So, I continue along my slow way. I'll leave you with Hopkins being slightly more predictable but no less lingually delicious about the degeneration of humanity; I don't need to comment in-depth except that the penultimate line is one of my favorites in Hopkin's catalog thus far.
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.
November 13, 2020
The poems in this are wonderful, however I docked a star because the second half of the book is kind of perplexing. The "selected prose" they chose it turns out is mostly letters to family and Hopkins' family. The biographical material is kind of interesting but I don't see it being of use to anyone but actual scholars of Hopkins. I'm just here for the poems lol
May 12, 2024
To be quite honest the vast majority of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry before "The Wreck of the Deutschland" is a complete non-starter for me: much too uninteresting and quotidian in imagery and form. Once you reach the publication of "Deutschland" in the mid-70s, though, it's genuinely shocking how much the exact inverse is true.
Hopkins seemingly out of nowhere (though some of the letters and diary entries here do help to shine light on his idiosyncratic process and workings) hit upon such a wonderfully expressive and somehow completely un-Victorian style - as if in his ascetic remove he conjured up and commingled the phantoms of a Medieval past and a Modernist future - that it makes almost every poem a joy to read to at least some degree. Sure he has a narrow thematic scope, though his moving 'Dark Sonnets' would disagree, and he can get bogged down in his rapture to the point of coming off a little twee (my professor pointed out the line "my heart in hiding/ stirred for a bird" as something she cannot read without laughing and "The Windhover" has never resonated with me as much since lol), but Hopkins' voice is genuinely unlike any other, and his work is simply such a visceral joy to read.
Many of the poems herein number among my absolute favourites, and "That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire..." has quite possibly done more to inspire my interest in the artform than any other work. His poetic language and metre makes me genuinely happy to be able to read and speak and give voice to language, and I can say that about him more than any other poet I've yet encountered. Even if his devotional themes are to some degree lost on an incurable atheist like me (although I would still argue that his sheer emotion and passion shines through regardless), and much of the work contained here I don't think I'll ever find myself coming back to, that is MORE than offset by the unending joy I find in the matured Hopkins' virtuosic and vibrant rhapsodies. Kennings clash and an ebullient sense of effusiveness and inventiveness abounds - even in his darkest and most profoundly sad moments ( "Carrion Comfort", "I Wake and Feel..", etc) where he seems to feel deserted or scorned even by the God he devoted himself and his poetry to, Hopkins manages to wring from his words images quite unlike any other: "Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours" is quite a way to describe depression.
While he might not have been a genius from the moment his pen touched paper, in his short life Hopkins more than managed to demonstrate his singularly powerful and gloriously off-kilter vision, grasping strands of expression from the beginning of English literature to far beyond the end of his lifetime and fashioning them into some of the most gorgeous lines of poetry I have ever had the privilege of reading.
[from "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 ín 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...
Hopkins seemingly out of nowhere (though some of the letters and diary entries here do help to shine light on his idiosyncratic process and workings) hit upon such a wonderfully expressive and somehow completely un-Victorian style - as if in his ascetic remove he conjured up and commingled the phantoms of a Medieval past and a Modernist future - that it makes almost every poem a joy to read to at least some degree. Sure he has a narrow thematic scope, though his moving 'Dark Sonnets' would disagree, and he can get bogged down in his rapture to the point of coming off a little twee (my professor pointed out the line "my heart in hiding/ stirred for a bird" as something she cannot read without laughing and "The Windhover" has never resonated with me as much since lol), but Hopkins' voice is genuinely unlike any other, and his work is simply such a visceral joy to read.
Many of the poems herein number among my absolute favourites, and "That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire..." has quite possibly done more to inspire my interest in the artform than any other work. His poetic language and metre makes me genuinely happy to be able to read and speak and give voice to language, and I can say that about him more than any other poet I've yet encountered. Even if his devotional themes are to some degree lost on an incurable atheist like me (although I would still argue that his sheer emotion and passion shines through regardless), and much of the work contained here I don't think I'll ever find myself coming back to, that is MORE than offset by the unending joy I find in the matured Hopkins' virtuosic and vibrant rhapsodies. Kennings clash and an ebullient sense of effusiveness and inventiveness abounds - even in his darkest and most profoundly sad moments ( "Carrion Comfort", "I Wake and Feel..", etc) where he seems to feel deserted or scorned even by the God he devoted himself and his poetry to, Hopkins manages to wring from his words images quite unlike any other: "Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours" is quite a way to describe depression.
While he might not have been a genius from the moment his pen touched paper, in his short life Hopkins more than managed to demonstrate his singularly powerful and gloriously off-kilter vision, grasping strands of expression from the beginning of English literature to far beyond the end of his lifetime and fashioning them into some of the most gorgeous lines of poetry I have ever had the privilege of reading.
[from "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 ín 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...
March 29, 2023
Gerard Manley Hopkins is a poet like no other. Some of the most dense poetry ive ever read, also some of the most unique and best. i can't say i loved every single poem but theres real genius and lots to love. poems to read over and over again. Highlights ~ "Il Mystico" "A Vision of the Mermaids" "The Lover's Stars" "Love Preparing to Fly" "A Voice from the World" "The Alchemist In The City" "The Nightingale" "Nondum" "The Elopement" "God's Grandeur" "As Kingfishers Catch Fire" "The Sea and the Skylark" "The Windhover" "Pied Beauty" "Hurrahing in Harvest" "Andromeda" "Spring and Fall" "Inversnaid" "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo" "'I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day" "No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief" "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection" "Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend" and "To R.B".
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January 24, 2015I really enjoyed reading the whole swoop of Hopkins represented here, especially the snippets and scraps and fragments of verses from early in Hopkins' working life. It was particularly fascinating to see the humor in Shakespearian-influenced play fragments and dialogues, as well as a significant worry about greatness or lack thereof, and an interesting focus on female saints: "Who thinks of Thecla?"I love to see the switch between the poet sensing the possibilities of a power he senses--"Let me now / Jolt and unset your morticed metaphors"--and even very early examples of spiritual frustration--even fragments of abandoned verse as evidence of spiritual journey and struggle as much as anything.
Also, I loved in this edition seeing that Hopkins wrote poems imagining visions of mermaids and rainbows and waterfalls, poems of witty bantery, school-boy type snark, laments of lost love, and Browning like monologues, and even a narrative-type poem of pathetic romance between king and commoner. He modeled an early poem, "Il Mystico" after "Il Pensoroso" which I'm trying not to put too much on, but I think it tells you a lot. There are poems in Latin and Greek, and radical translations.
There are lines here that I've never read from him before: "Stars like golden bees," "Love, O my God, to call Thee Love and Love."
And check out this little gem:
Repeat that, repeat
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-spirngs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.
In the journal sections, some things I've probably read and forgotten, little extras that give you a sense of him--the day when all he wrote was "The turkey and hens will let a little chick mount their backs and sit between the wings."
The spiritual exercise meditations are, i/m/o better than the sermons. Audience was always hard for him--so wanted, and so difficult to consider.
All that said, though, I will probably NOT use this edition for undergraduates again, I was comparing this edition to Moral Beauty, God's Grace: Major Poems and Spiritual Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins. This edition, the Oxford World Classics edition is much less pleasing on the page, is too full and it is hard to annotate it effectively with one's own notes because of how densely the poems are printed. Also, I cannot help but really want FOOTNOTES rather than endnotes, as endless flipping is SO ridiculously interruptive. The paper is radically at odds with the glory of the language, too. It's probably too much information and to little, too, for the rich early encounters with Hopkins. The notes don't tell the confused undergraduate enough BASIC information, and offer to the scholar sometimes too little cross referencing.
I wanted a straight up literary studies version rather than a necessarily religiously oriented one, and this version IS full of careful editing of what can euphemistically be described as a textual critic's _challenge_. But for my money, in scholarship, I want dates, history, and editorial or historical notes as close to the text as possible for study, or else at least nice paper and plenty of gentle introduction.
Also, I loved in this edition seeing that Hopkins wrote poems imagining visions of mermaids and rainbows and waterfalls, poems of witty bantery, school-boy type snark, laments of lost love, and Browning like monologues, and even a narrative-type poem of pathetic romance between king and commoner. He modeled an early poem, "Il Mystico" after "Il Pensoroso" which I'm trying not to put too much on, but I think it tells you a lot. There are poems in Latin and Greek, and radical translations.
There are lines here that I've never read from him before: "Stars like golden bees," "Love, O my God, to call Thee Love and Love."
And check out this little gem:
Repeat that, repeat
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-spirngs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.
In the journal sections, some things I've probably read and forgotten, little extras that give you a sense of him--the day when all he wrote was "The turkey and hens will let a little chick mount their backs and sit between the wings."
The spiritual exercise meditations are, i/m/o better than the sermons. Audience was always hard for him--so wanted, and so difficult to consider.
All that said, though, I will probably NOT use this edition for undergraduates again, I was comparing this edition to Moral Beauty, God's Grace: Major Poems and Spiritual Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins. This edition, the Oxford World Classics edition is much less pleasing on the page, is too full and it is hard to annotate it effectively with one's own notes because of how densely the poems are printed. Also, I cannot help but really want FOOTNOTES rather than endnotes, as endless flipping is SO ridiculously interruptive. The paper is radically at odds with the glory of the language, too. It's probably too much information and to little, too, for the rich early encounters with Hopkins. The notes don't tell the confused undergraduate enough BASIC information, and offer to the scholar sometimes too little cross referencing.
I wanted a straight up literary studies version rather than a necessarily religiously oriented one, and this version IS full of careful editing of what can euphemistically be described as a textual critic's _challenge_. But for my money, in scholarship, I want dates, history, and editorial or historical notes as close to the text as possible for study, or else at least nice paper and plenty of gentle introduction.
July 25, 2011
A colleague of Hopkins once claimed that after reading The Wreck of the Deutschland, he got a very bad headache. I cannot disagree. Although I think its just that Hopkins might actually be too brilliant for the average mind. His works are weighted with metaphors, references, imagery and unorthodox use of language. One can research the crap out of a poem and still be missing a piece. It's quite mind-blowing. That's what the five stars is for. Not because I particularly enjoyed his poetry (I more respected, than delighted in) but because I acknowledge and appreciate his talent, his experimentation with poetic devices and what he ultimately did for modernist poetry (then again, I'm not much of a poetry junkie). Dare I say he was a genius? I think he might and truly have been.
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April 6, 2025Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
June 16, 2023
To properly read Hopkins, you must do two things: you must read backwards (chronologically), and you must read aloud, not caring who hears you or if you even understand what is being read. Hopkins deftly makes English sound like a foreign language. He doesn't do this with niche references, but with ingenious use of diction and rhythm. His "sprung rhythm" (basically just accentual verse) gives him a cadence not often seen in rhymed and metered poetry, one which stretches and compresses, just as everyday language often does. Contrary to what poetry instructors say, we don't often speak in iambic pentameter, especially if we ever hesitate or repeat ourselves.
And that's what we get with late Hopkins poetry; not only is he still wrestling with God, he is also wrestling with language, attempting to break it like a horse. These late poems instantly paralyze the listener. Paradoxically, reading them aloud causes the exact opposite response; the energy flowing through the syllables makes you practically bounce as you read word after unexpected word. The beautiful thing about the rush of words is that you don't even notice these poems are rhymed. The lines are so saturated with alliteration, assonance, and sharp enjambment, all of which push you forward faster, tying the words sonically (and only later meaningfully) together. One particularly great example of each word linking to the next is in "The Sea and the Skylark"
How ring right out our sordid turbid time,
1) The ending "w" in "how" places your lips in the starting place for the "r" in "ring"
2) The "ri" repeats in "ring" and "right," and the "g," ever deceptive, goes silent in the second word (but visually rhymes)
3) The repetition shifts from the beginning of the word to its ending, with a hard "t" ending both
4) The repetition shifts back to the beginning of the word, with the "ou" repeating, this time softening the ending to an "r"
5) The "w" sound in "our" gets dropped and slotted into the first syllable of "sordid"
6) We harden the soft "s" into a taut "t", slit the top of the "o" open into a "u", and flip a "d" into a "b" to get "turbid"
7) The hardened "t" taps one more time
Such musicality is dangerous, however, constantly running the risk of foundering on gimmicky sing-songy-ness, such as the last line of "What being in rank-old nature:"
Or a jaunting vaunting vaulting assaulting trumpet telling.
The line, rather than being integrated into the rest of the poem, sticks out as the last line and a one-line stanza. As such, it shows where the experiment breaks down, where these lines must be nested within one another, building off and heavily enjambing each other, so you have to read across lines to get the full sense of the phrase. Even then, phrases get stuck in your head long before any meaning emerges. In "The Windhover," the phrases "dapple-dawn-drawn falcon," "rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing," "the achieve of, the mastery of the thing," "gash gold-vermillion" all echo far ahead of any sense.
Thus Hopkins' poetry is the ultimate litmus test for being comfortable with not-knowing, with allowing meaning to slowly bubble to the surface instead of being self-evident. Before I revisited Hopkins' poetry, the phrase "Pitched past pitch of grief" had been stuck in my mind and would occasionally spill out into things I wrote, having no clue what it meant other than a paradoxical feeling of grief beyond words. Upon re-reading, the line "More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring" is now stuck in my teeth, which gives me even less impetus to floss.
Not only is this where most people start with Hopkins, but it's also often where they end. The teacher, lazy, stupid, lacking both a heart and a brain, gives one of these late poems to students and lets them suffer, never telling them that it's okay to tread water, it's okay to be baffled. We've gotten so used to instantaneous (positive) feedback, and when we don't receive it, we panic. Thus Hopkins is the antidote to this superficiality. He also forces you to read aloud, another lost art in the age of half-reading headlines and moving on with your day. Imagine someone reading an entire novel aloud. Would you think they're crazy? Or stupid? Well, all reading used to be aloud back in the middle ages. Reading aloud and using a pointer to keep track of where you are not only propels the reading forward, but it also makes for very easy osmosis by any pupils near enough to look and hear. But when dry technicality overcomes poetic memorability, you get (forgettable) writing instead of (interactive, communal) recitation. I think that that's what Plato actually feared: not the writing down of beautiful poems, but the writing down of unutterably ugly terms and conditions, scientific essays, etc.
As one moves backwards through Hopkins' oeuvre, you run across the fragmentary "St. Winefred's Well," an unfinished play that he started. Here, Hopkins shows once again that the intenser the emotions, the better his poetry, as the character in Act II laments killing another character in language rivaling Shakespeare. And you can tell Hopkins is indebted to Shakespeare; his earlier fragmentary plays ring out in a distinctly Shakespearean tenor. Hopkins even strangely (to me) translates some of Shakespeare's songs (from the plays) into Greek and Latin. I might be tempted to call him a nerd, but this proficiency with various deeply intertwined languages helps link together those unexpected words we find in his late work, so I'm thankful he dove so deep.
Of course we can lament and ask "what might he have written if he wasn't a full-time Jesuit, but rather a full time poet," but if that was the case he probably never would have made the breakthrough he did with "The Wreck of the Deutschland." After taking about 7 years away from poetry, Hopkins had experienced quite a lot (converting to Catholicism, joining a Holy Order, being moved around constantly, etc.), and he also, with his newfound emphasis on "sprung rhythm," announced to the world that he didn't care what it thought of him. Sure, there's some nice poems sprinkled among the earlier works, especially "Nondum," "My Prayers Must Meet a Brazen Heaven," and "Myself Unholy," but he probably would have never reached the same depths of despair, nor the break from his contemporary poets needed to get such beauty as "Carrion Comfort" and "Pied Beauty."
I will admit, I had attempted (quite unsuccessfully) to read "The Wreck" several times in the past, always getting flustered at the first few stanzas and giving up upon seeing the length. But once you've more thoroughly understood where he ended, the rhythms he employs later, you see this as a bridge into all of that, a bizarrely happy recital of the death of some nuns at sea. And that paradoxical cocktail of emotions is Hopkins at his essence: he is both overjoyed at nature, at life, at God, at the miracle of language, but he also despairs in his fallen human nature, his alienation from secular "life" (his celibacy), his distance from a silent, punishing God, and most importantly the fear of his seeming inability to convey all of that to others through language.
Hopkins thus shows himself to be one of the few on the brink, looking both backwards and forwards, despairing and hoping. His poetry is simultaneously fresh and modern (maybe even post-modern, in its diction and pacing), while also extremely dated (in strictly orthodox religious content, in his unironic use of "thee's" and "thou's," etc.). Hopkins is simultaneously well-known (most students suffer through his poems at one point or another), while also obscure, misunderstood, seen as quaint, and too-often known for "a few good poems" and then forgotten. In fact, many poets go through what is called a "Hopkins phase" where they, in their youthful vigor, experiment with the heavy alliteration, kenning, repetition, and enjambment that Hopkins refined in his own strange way. Few are able to maintain it, and it's interesting to wonder if Hopkins would have himself, had he lived to old age.
That, of course, we'll never know; all we'll know is the words he left behind, and even then we don't know precisely what he was attempting to convey. We can get ever closer, the more we repeat, recite, and meditate on these words, these aural paintstrokes so deftly wound round the page. Most of all, let's be comforted by his honesty, especially these words from "Nondum:"
Oh! till Thou givest that sense beyond,
To shew Thee that Thou art, and near,
Let patience with her chastening wand
Dispel the doubt and dry the tear;
And lead me child-like by the hand
If still in darkness not in fear.
That mentioning of childlike trust echos in the next poem, simply titled "Easter," whose most brutal and most beautiful line is perhaps the best way to end:
Upon Christ throw all away
And that's what we get with late Hopkins poetry; not only is he still wrestling with God, he is also wrestling with language, attempting to break it like a horse. These late poems instantly paralyze the listener. Paradoxically, reading them aloud causes the exact opposite response; the energy flowing through the syllables makes you practically bounce as you read word after unexpected word. The beautiful thing about the rush of words is that you don't even notice these poems are rhymed. The lines are so saturated with alliteration, assonance, and sharp enjambment, all of which push you forward faster, tying the words sonically (and only later meaningfully) together. One particularly great example of each word linking to the next is in "The Sea and the Skylark"
How ring right out our sordid turbid time,
1) The ending "w" in "how" places your lips in the starting place for the "r" in "ring"
2) The "ri" repeats in "ring" and "right," and the "g," ever deceptive, goes silent in the second word (but visually rhymes)
3) The repetition shifts from the beginning of the word to its ending, with a hard "t" ending both
4) The repetition shifts back to the beginning of the word, with the "ou" repeating, this time softening the ending to an "r"
5) The "w" sound in "our" gets dropped and slotted into the first syllable of "sordid"
6) We harden the soft "s" into a taut "t", slit the top of the "o" open into a "u", and flip a "d" into a "b" to get "turbid"
7) The hardened "t" taps one more time
Such musicality is dangerous, however, constantly running the risk of foundering on gimmicky sing-songy-ness, such as the last line of "What being in rank-old nature:"
Or a jaunting vaunting vaulting assaulting trumpet telling.
The line, rather than being integrated into the rest of the poem, sticks out as the last line and a one-line stanza. As such, it shows where the experiment breaks down, where these lines must be nested within one another, building off and heavily enjambing each other, so you have to read across lines to get the full sense of the phrase. Even then, phrases get stuck in your head long before any meaning emerges. In "The Windhover," the phrases "dapple-dawn-drawn falcon," "rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing," "the achieve of, the mastery of the thing," "gash gold-vermillion" all echo far ahead of any sense.
Thus Hopkins' poetry is the ultimate litmus test for being comfortable with not-knowing, with allowing meaning to slowly bubble to the surface instead of being self-evident. Before I revisited Hopkins' poetry, the phrase "Pitched past pitch of grief" had been stuck in my mind and would occasionally spill out into things I wrote, having no clue what it meant other than a paradoxical feeling of grief beyond words. Upon re-reading, the line "More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring" is now stuck in my teeth, which gives me even less impetus to floss.
Not only is this where most people start with Hopkins, but it's also often where they end. The teacher, lazy, stupid, lacking both a heart and a brain, gives one of these late poems to students and lets them suffer, never telling them that it's okay to tread water, it's okay to be baffled. We've gotten so used to instantaneous (positive) feedback, and when we don't receive it, we panic. Thus Hopkins is the antidote to this superficiality. He also forces you to read aloud, another lost art in the age of half-reading headlines and moving on with your day. Imagine someone reading an entire novel aloud. Would you think they're crazy? Or stupid? Well, all reading used to be aloud back in the middle ages. Reading aloud and using a pointer to keep track of where you are not only propels the reading forward, but it also makes for very easy osmosis by any pupils near enough to look and hear. But when dry technicality overcomes poetic memorability, you get (forgettable) writing instead of (interactive, communal) recitation. I think that that's what Plato actually feared: not the writing down of beautiful poems, but the writing down of unutterably ugly terms and conditions, scientific essays, etc.
As one moves backwards through Hopkins' oeuvre, you run across the fragmentary "St. Winefred's Well," an unfinished play that he started. Here, Hopkins shows once again that the intenser the emotions, the better his poetry, as the character in Act II laments killing another character in language rivaling Shakespeare. And you can tell Hopkins is indebted to Shakespeare; his earlier fragmentary plays ring out in a distinctly Shakespearean tenor. Hopkins even strangely (to me) translates some of Shakespeare's songs (from the plays) into Greek and Latin. I might be tempted to call him a nerd, but this proficiency with various deeply intertwined languages helps link together those unexpected words we find in his late work, so I'm thankful he dove so deep.
Of course we can lament and ask "what might he have written if he wasn't a full-time Jesuit, but rather a full time poet," but if that was the case he probably never would have made the breakthrough he did with "The Wreck of the Deutschland." After taking about 7 years away from poetry, Hopkins had experienced quite a lot (converting to Catholicism, joining a Holy Order, being moved around constantly, etc.), and he also, with his newfound emphasis on "sprung rhythm," announced to the world that he didn't care what it thought of him. Sure, there's some nice poems sprinkled among the earlier works, especially "Nondum," "My Prayers Must Meet a Brazen Heaven," and "Myself Unholy," but he probably would have never reached the same depths of despair, nor the break from his contemporary poets needed to get such beauty as "Carrion Comfort" and "Pied Beauty."
I will admit, I had attempted (quite unsuccessfully) to read "The Wreck" several times in the past, always getting flustered at the first few stanzas and giving up upon seeing the length. But once you've more thoroughly understood where he ended, the rhythms he employs later, you see this as a bridge into all of that, a bizarrely happy recital of the death of some nuns at sea. And that paradoxical cocktail of emotions is Hopkins at his essence: he is both overjoyed at nature, at life, at God, at the miracle of language, but he also despairs in his fallen human nature, his alienation from secular "life" (his celibacy), his distance from a silent, punishing God, and most importantly the fear of his seeming inability to convey all of that to others through language.
Hopkins thus shows himself to be one of the few on the brink, looking both backwards and forwards, despairing and hoping. His poetry is simultaneously fresh and modern (maybe even post-modern, in its diction and pacing), while also extremely dated (in strictly orthodox religious content, in his unironic use of "thee's" and "thou's," etc.). Hopkins is simultaneously well-known (most students suffer through his poems at one point or another), while also obscure, misunderstood, seen as quaint, and too-often known for "a few good poems" and then forgotten. In fact, many poets go through what is called a "Hopkins phase" where they, in their youthful vigor, experiment with the heavy alliteration, kenning, repetition, and enjambment that Hopkins refined in his own strange way. Few are able to maintain it, and it's interesting to wonder if Hopkins would have himself, had he lived to old age.
That, of course, we'll never know; all we'll know is the words he left behind, and even then we don't know precisely what he was attempting to convey. We can get ever closer, the more we repeat, recite, and meditate on these words, these aural paintstrokes so deftly wound round the page. Most of all, let's be comforted by his honesty, especially these words from "Nondum:"
Oh! till Thou givest that sense beyond,
To shew Thee that Thou art, and near,
Let patience with her chastening wand
Dispel the doubt and dry the tear;
And lead me child-like by the hand
If still in darkness not in fear.
That mentioning of childlike trust echos in the next poem, simply titled "Easter," whose most brutal and most beautiful line is perhaps the best way to end:
Upon Christ throw all away
September 11, 2023
There is simply no poet who resonates so deeply within my kardia as Hopkins. There are plenty of other poets who have pierced my soul—Donne, Dickinson, Eliot, Keats, and Herbert among them—but perhaps none that have become part of my being as Hopkins has. The dour Jesuit, tormented by fears of baseness and inadequacy, seizes upon his status as a pilgrim and pours forth his praises and fears in language that must be eaten like golden manna rather than simply read. Literary critics rightly point out that he was a great early modern heralding the end of Victorian primness and optimism, a quivering voice hanging desperately onto an emotionally-heightened faith amidst the quickly filling quagmire of the late century—and the devout rightly tell us that no one reveled in the beauty of creation quite like him. Indeed, Hopkins has helped me to know the English countryside so well that I hardly feel like I need to visit it. But what ultimately keeps me coming back is his lavish celebrations of sacramental embodiment. His poems are child-like expressions of play imbued with the gravest adult realizations. But unlike, say, Frost, who continually returns to "nothing gold can stay," Hopkins celebrates a world that is built to last eternally.
In the early lyrics which comprise the first half of a complete volume, some of them a mere single line, he achieves a concentrated eloquence of perception that is almost unbelievable, and it boggles me that these poems are not given as much recognition. Many of them anticipate the "imagism" of Pound's petals on a wet bough or Williams' red wheelbarrow. In the fragments of unfinished dramas, he gives us tantalizing tastes of what would surely have been the greatest English verse plays since Shakespeare. In his magnum opus "The Wreck of the Deutschlander," he starts with a modern scene of martyrdom at the hands of "brute nature" and spirals soaringly up to a climax that matches the final pages of the Paradiso in sheer eye-watering ecstasy. In the other mature "sprung rhythm" poems such as "The Woodlark" (which is maybe the most fun piece of verse ever written, right next to "The Bells") and the frequently anthologized pieces, he weaves sonatas of verbal music that dance and gleam like seraphim. Whenever I see piles of dirty snow residue stacked up against brown grass under the gray sky of a Midwest April, I call it an "Inversnaid sight". And in the late "Terrible Sonnets," he spins the psalms of supplication into expressions of blackest agony that almost crush the bones just to read them. Hopkins' early death, sorrowing as it is, is surely not as full of unrealized beauty as those of Schubert, Mozart, and Austen. For how could one possibly say more about reality than what is said in poems like "The Windhover"? Hopkins did indeed work to cultivate the "habit of perfection," and if you routinely experience him, you just may do so as well.
P.S. This volume also contains a selection of letters, journal entries, and sermons; all of which are extremely valuable. The sermons are surprisingly conventional, but the more personal prose is often captivating, especially when he outlines his theory of poetics. The scholarship and annotations in the Oxford edition are mostly helpful, but I would prefer some more interpretation rather than just dry explanation of textual history and allusions - the editors seem to shy away from Hopkins’ spirituality, which is of course unforgivable.
In the early lyrics which comprise the first half of a complete volume, some of them a mere single line, he achieves a concentrated eloquence of perception that is almost unbelievable, and it boggles me that these poems are not given as much recognition. Many of them anticipate the "imagism" of Pound's petals on a wet bough or Williams' red wheelbarrow. In the fragments of unfinished dramas, he gives us tantalizing tastes of what would surely have been the greatest English verse plays since Shakespeare. In his magnum opus "The Wreck of the Deutschlander," he starts with a modern scene of martyrdom at the hands of "brute nature" and spirals soaringly up to a climax that matches the final pages of the Paradiso in sheer eye-watering ecstasy. In the other mature "sprung rhythm" poems such as "The Woodlark" (which is maybe the most fun piece of verse ever written, right next to "The Bells") and the frequently anthologized pieces, he weaves sonatas of verbal music that dance and gleam like seraphim. Whenever I see piles of dirty snow residue stacked up against brown grass under the gray sky of a Midwest April, I call it an "Inversnaid sight". And in the late "Terrible Sonnets," he spins the psalms of supplication into expressions of blackest agony that almost crush the bones just to read them. Hopkins' early death, sorrowing as it is, is surely not as full of unrealized beauty as those of Schubert, Mozart, and Austen. For how could one possibly say more about reality than what is said in poems like "The Windhover"? Hopkins did indeed work to cultivate the "habit of perfection," and if you routinely experience him, you just may do so as well.
P.S. This volume also contains a selection of letters, journal entries, and sermons; all of which are extremely valuable. The sermons are surprisingly conventional, but the more personal prose is often captivating, especially when he outlines his theory of poetics. The scholarship and annotations in the Oxford edition are mostly helpful, but I would prefer some more interpretation rather than just dry explanation of textual history and allusions - the editors seem to shy away from Hopkins’ spirituality, which is of course unforgivable.
November 15, 2023
A few gems in here, but I was, overall, not a big fan of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poetic style.
November 6, 2017
My first encounter with Gerard Manley Hopkins was in my third year at a rigid Christian secondary school. We were required to do what seemed like a token memorisation of a poem, and the poem that someone had chosen for us to memorise was 'When kingfishers catch fire...'. We students weren't happy about this and even our English teacher seemed apologetic about the task. We groaned and moaned our way through a reading of the poem and eventually got tested on our memorisation. I remember the whole thing being a painful process with a sense of resentment that seemed to be shared by the teacher and students alike.
The truth of the matter is that those kingfishers catching fire could have been like a spark of illumination in that dour setting.
Since then, I had come to respect Hopkins by reputation due to his high regard in the literary world - seen as a forerunner of modern poetry in much the same way as the impressionists were forerunners of modern art, and as an utterly unique voice. He's also recently cropped up in my readings of Richard Rohr and Eugene Peterson (in fact a line from the kingfishers poem gives the title to one of Peterson's best known books - 'Christ plays in ten thousand places'). Christian poetry was a research topic of mine at university but I'd never dealt with Hopkins's work firsthand. I decided it was time to remedy that, so got hold of this edition of his works - looking forward to not only reading Hopkins's poems but also some of his prose on various poetic and spiritual subjects.
Poor Gerard. This book does him something of a disservice by its exhaustiveness - it publishes every poem he wrote - and his every attempt - unfinished fragments and abandoned ideas included. There aren't many creatives, no matter how gifted they are, who would want all their attempts published. So much of what appears in the first part of this book is average at best - but we can't blame Hopkins for that.
Then it all takes off, starting with his poem 'The Wreck of the Deutschland'. Actually the shift occurs with a reprint of his introduction to his first published collection. This introduction is an almost unreadable and technical explanation of a form of poetic meter that he devised called 'sprung rhythm'. The sense you get from this explanation is that he was desperate to establish this meter as credible. No such defence should have been necessary - Hopkins was doing something new and unmatched to this day. Technicality aside, in his best poems, when sprung rhythm is employed and is left to its own visceral devices, rising above the constraints of the Victorian poetry of the day, there is a stunning impact on the ear that carries an almost primal, incantational sense.
I have a piece of advice locked and loaded for any occasion when a person asks for my opinion on how poetry should be appreciated. I should say that these occasions exist almost entirely in my imagination - weirdly, the appreciation of poetry doesn't come up in many conversations... The piece of advice is that primarily, before you start getting bogged down in what a poem means (as if it's a riddle to be solved) you should think about whether it sounds good. This is certainly true with Hopkins's poetry. It is very sensual. And Hopkins had this in mind. I came across a quote from him recently, posited as his definition of poetry: "Speech framed to be heard for its own sake and interest even over and above its interest of meaning." "My verse," he says in one of the letters printed in the book, "is less to read than heard..." And that's a key to the appreciation of his work. Relax, hear the poetry, and enjoy it.
On the philosophical / metaphysical side, the thing about Hopkins that I'm most intrigued by are his ideas on 'inscape' and 'instress'. These two terms were coined by Hopkins and are only ever alluded to - the concepts are never fleshed out in his prose. 'Inscape' seems to be the 'pattern' of things - or perhaps the essence of the thing that lies below the surface. The selected journal entries in the book show him looking for it in waves, mountains and trees. 'Instress' seems to be the chord that a profound thing strikes within the individual. When he writes about the technicalities of poetry he spends a lot of time talking about stress - ie the accented beats in the rhythm of a poem. He seems to be translating this concept metaphorically as the impact of a thing internally. Perhaps Hopkins would say that a good poem will reveal 'inscape' and create 'instress'.
Putting Hopkins's poetry alongside his prose (journals, letters, sermons, meditations), it seems he was a man at odds regarding his calling. Having converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism at a fairly young age, he joined a Jesuit order. He put himself under the command of that order as his act of devotion to God and, between the lines, he has the nagging thought that perhaps his passion for poetry is inappropriate, perhaps a waste. The tasks he was given by the order were not poetical - and they seem to constantly chaff him - he wrestles with depression - struggling, it seems, to accept what he believed was the will of God (ie what he was told to do by the order) and trying to accept it as mortification. There are several alarming pieces in the prose section of the book - most notably his mediations on hell and death. They stand in utter and stark contrast to the joie de vivre of a poem like 'When kingfishers catch fire'. It's a tragedy really. One can only imagine what might have happened if he'd been released to pursue his full talents and passion.
The truth of the matter is that those kingfishers catching fire could have been like a spark of illumination in that dour setting.
Since then, I had come to respect Hopkins by reputation due to his high regard in the literary world - seen as a forerunner of modern poetry in much the same way as the impressionists were forerunners of modern art, and as an utterly unique voice. He's also recently cropped up in my readings of Richard Rohr and Eugene Peterson (in fact a line from the kingfishers poem gives the title to one of Peterson's best known books - 'Christ plays in ten thousand places'). Christian poetry was a research topic of mine at university but I'd never dealt with Hopkins's work firsthand. I decided it was time to remedy that, so got hold of this edition of his works - looking forward to not only reading Hopkins's poems but also some of his prose on various poetic and spiritual subjects.
Poor Gerard. This book does him something of a disservice by its exhaustiveness - it publishes every poem he wrote - and his every attempt - unfinished fragments and abandoned ideas included. There aren't many creatives, no matter how gifted they are, who would want all their attempts published. So much of what appears in the first part of this book is average at best - but we can't blame Hopkins for that.
Then it all takes off, starting with his poem 'The Wreck of the Deutschland'. Actually the shift occurs with a reprint of his introduction to his first published collection. This introduction is an almost unreadable and technical explanation of a form of poetic meter that he devised called 'sprung rhythm'. The sense you get from this explanation is that he was desperate to establish this meter as credible. No such defence should have been necessary - Hopkins was doing something new and unmatched to this day. Technicality aside, in his best poems, when sprung rhythm is employed and is left to its own visceral devices, rising above the constraints of the Victorian poetry of the day, there is a stunning impact on the ear that carries an almost primal, incantational sense.
I have a piece of advice locked and loaded for any occasion when a person asks for my opinion on how poetry should be appreciated. I should say that these occasions exist almost entirely in my imagination - weirdly, the appreciation of poetry doesn't come up in many conversations... The piece of advice is that primarily, before you start getting bogged down in what a poem means (as if it's a riddle to be solved) you should think about whether it sounds good. This is certainly true with Hopkins's poetry. It is very sensual. And Hopkins had this in mind. I came across a quote from him recently, posited as his definition of poetry: "Speech framed to be heard for its own sake and interest even over and above its interest of meaning." "My verse," he says in one of the letters printed in the book, "is less to read than heard..." And that's a key to the appreciation of his work. Relax, hear the poetry, and enjoy it.
On the philosophical / metaphysical side, the thing about Hopkins that I'm most intrigued by are his ideas on 'inscape' and 'instress'. These two terms were coined by Hopkins and are only ever alluded to - the concepts are never fleshed out in his prose. 'Inscape' seems to be the 'pattern' of things - or perhaps the essence of the thing that lies below the surface. The selected journal entries in the book show him looking for it in waves, mountains and trees. 'Instress' seems to be the chord that a profound thing strikes within the individual. When he writes about the technicalities of poetry he spends a lot of time talking about stress - ie the accented beats in the rhythm of a poem. He seems to be translating this concept metaphorically as the impact of a thing internally. Perhaps Hopkins would say that a good poem will reveal 'inscape' and create 'instress'.
Putting Hopkins's poetry alongside his prose (journals, letters, sermons, meditations), it seems he was a man at odds regarding his calling. Having converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism at a fairly young age, he joined a Jesuit order. He put himself under the command of that order as his act of devotion to God and, between the lines, he has the nagging thought that perhaps his passion for poetry is inappropriate, perhaps a waste. The tasks he was given by the order were not poetical - and they seem to constantly chaff him - he wrestles with depression - struggling, it seems, to accept what he believed was the will of God (ie what he was told to do by the order) and trying to accept it as mortification. There are several alarming pieces in the prose section of the book - most notably his mediations on hell and death. They stand in utter and stark contrast to the joie de vivre of a poem like 'When kingfishers catch fire'. It's a tragedy really. One can only imagine what might have happened if he'd been released to pursue his full talents and passion.
November 25, 2011
I... think I actually like GMH less than when I started. His best is amazing, but this is a nearly-complete collection, including all the poems, and a lot of them aren't all that great. Or at least they are too frilly and Victorian for me. I don't think it benefited in being read in parallel with Larkin, who is a seriously miserable jerk, but who writes amazingly clear and lucid poetry - his use of language, wow.
I still think God's Grandeur is amazing, but there aren't enough other poems that reach that level for me.
I still think God's Grandeur is amazing, but there aren't enough other poems that reach that level for me.
July 29, 2008
Hopkins is a wonderful writer. His views of inscape and instress are intriguing. Moreover, the sprung rhythm that he employs in his poetry is superb. If you are interested in matters pertaining to intertextuality, take a look at Hopkins’s poetry in relationship to William Wordsworth’s concept dealing with “spots of time.” Aside from Wordsworth, Hopkins’s early work reflects a certain Keatsian sensuousness that is worth looking at. Have fun reading his works!!!!!
August 7, 2021
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89)
He was an English poet, Catholic priest, and a Jesuit priest.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote poems during the Victorian era. I read a brief biography about his life. Hopkins struggled with reconciling his poetry writing alongside his Catholic belief. Christians did not view the artistic career and life in the same way as they do in our current era. Writers and artists of all types were suspicious and not trusted. And, even now, they are often looked upon by some people as not a real career choice but a hobby when there is free time. Yesterday, I saw a comment on a Facebook post that a woman shared in response to reading. She said, “I used to read all the time, but now I have a real life and I choose to live a real life.” I didn’t say it, but I thought it, what the what?
I bought this book because of the poems, but I enjoyed the letters and journal entries too. I believe letters and journals reveal a person’s inner life and personality that are not noticed even if we could converse with them.
The things I notice about his poems:
1. They rhyme.
2. They are strong with vivid imagery.
3. A combining of strong descriptive words that literally lift off the page.
4. The poems are more fun to read out loud.
An example from one of the first poems in the book. Page 6.
Aeschylus: Prometheus Desmotes
“Prometheus”—–
“Divinity of air, fleet-featherer’d gales,
Ye river-heads, thou billowy deep that laugh’st
A countless laughter, Earth mother of all,
Thou sun, allseeing eyeball of the day,
Witness to me! Look you I am a god,
And these are from the gods my penalties
Look with that unseemliness
I a thousand thousand years
Must watch down with weariness
Fallen from my peers.
The young chief of the bless’d of heaven
Hath devis’d new pains for me
And hath given
This indignity of chains.
What is, and what is to be,
All alike is grief to me;
I look all ways but only see
The drear dull burthen of unending pains.”
Other poems I love:
“Mystico”
“Spring and Death”
“It was a hard thing”
A Voice from the World
“Daphne”
The Wreck of the Deutschland
“God’s Grandeur”
“In the Valley of the Elwy”
A few of his poems are in Latin. I do not read Latin.
After reading the journal entries and letters:
1. I feel Hopkins was a kind, passionate, compassionate, deep thinker, and good communicator.
2. He also spoke of other authors. For example: Whitman, Tennyson, Emily Bronte, Blackmore, Hardy, and Mrs. Gaskell.
He was an English poet, Catholic priest, and a Jesuit priest.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote poems during the Victorian era. I read a brief biography about his life. Hopkins struggled with reconciling his poetry writing alongside his Catholic belief. Christians did not view the artistic career and life in the same way as they do in our current era. Writers and artists of all types were suspicious and not trusted. And, even now, they are often looked upon by some people as not a real career choice but a hobby when there is free time. Yesterday, I saw a comment on a Facebook post that a woman shared in response to reading. She said, “I used to read all the time, but now I have a real life and I choose to live a real life.” I didn’t say it, but I thought it, what the what?
I bought this book because of the poems, but I enjoyed the letters and journal entries too. I believe letters and journals reveal a person’s inner life and personality that are not noticed even if we could converse with them.
The things I notice about his poems:
1. They rhyme.
2. They are strong with vivid imagery.
3. A combining of strong descriptive words that literally lift off the page.
4. The poems are more fun to read out loud.
An example from one of the first poems in the book. Page 6.
Aeschylus: Prometheus Desmotes
“Prometheus”—–
“Divinity of air, fleet-featherer’d gales,
Ye river-heads, thou billowy deep that laugh’st
A countless laughter, Earth mother of all,
Thou sun, allseeing eyeball of the day,
Witness to me! Look you I am a god,
And these are from the gods my penalties
Look with that unseemliness
I a thousand thousand years
Must watch down with weariness
Fallen from my peers.
The young chief of the bless’d of heaven
Hath devis’d new pains for me
And hath given
This indignity of chains.
What is, and what is to be,
All alike is grief to me;
I look all ways but only see
The drear dull burthen of unending pains.”
Other poems I love:
“Mystico”
“Spring and Death”
“It was a hard thing”
A Voice from the World
“Daphne”
The Wreck of the Deutschland
“God’s Grandeur”
“In the Valley of the Elwy”
A few of his poems are in Latin. I do not read Latin.
After reading the journal entries and letters:
1. I feel Hopkins was a kind, passionate, compassionate, deep thinker, and good communicator.
2. He also spoke of other authors. For example: Whitman, Tennyson, Emily Bronte, Blackmore, Hardy, and Mrs. Gaskell.
Read
October 7, 2022Standout poems
A fragment of anything you like (Page 11)
A Vision of the Mermaids (Page 11)
Spring and Death (Page 16)
No, they are come (Page 41)
The Queen’s Crowning (Page 51)
See how Spring Opens (Page 68)
Moonless darkness (Page 77)
In the staring darkness (Page 78)
The stars were packed so close (Page 79)
Easter (Page 83)
Hope Holds to Christ (Page 128)
God’s Grandeur (Page 128)
The Starlight Night (Page 128)
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame (Page 129)
The May Magnificat (Page 139)
Trio of Triolets (Page 157)
Strike, churl (Page 167)
Thee, God, I come from (Page 169)
To his Watch (Page 171)
-
Plum purple was the west; but spikes of light/Spear’d open lustrous gashes, crimson-white
-
The zenith melted to a rose of air;/The waves were rosy-lipp'd; the crimson glare/Shower'd the cliffs and every fret and spire/With garnet wreathes and blooms of rosy-budded fire.
-
On Death, Gerard Manley Hoplins, Page 295
We shall die in these bodies. I see you living before me, with the mind's eye, brethren, I see your corpses: those same bodies that sit there before me are rows of corpses that will be. And I that speak to you, you hear and see me, you see me breathe and move: this breathing body is my corpse and I am living in my tomb. This is one thing certain of your place of death; you are there now, you sit within your corpses; look no farther: there where you are you will die.
A fragment of anything you like (Page 11)
A Vision of the Mermaids (Page 11)
Spring and Death (Page 16)
No, they are come (Page 41)
The Queen’s Crowning (Page 51)
See how Spring Opens (Page 68)
Moonless darkness (Page 77)
In the staring darkness (Page 78)
The stars were packed so close (Page 79)
Easter (Page 83)
Hope Holds to Christ (Page 128)
God’s Grandeur (Page 128)
The Starlight Night (Page 128)
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame (Page 129)
The May Magnificat (Page 139)
Trio of Triolets (Page 157)
Strike, churl (Page 167)
Thee, God, I come from (Page 169)
To his Watch (Page 171)
-
Plum purple was the west; but spikes of light/Spear’d open lustrous gashes, crimson-white
-
The zenith melted to a rose of air;/The waves were rosy-lipp'd; the crimson glare/Shower'd the cliffs and every fret and spire/With garnet wreathes and blooms of rosy-budded fire.
-
On Death, Gerard Manley Hoplins, Page 295
We shall die in these bodies. I see you living before me, with the mind's eye, brethren, I see your corpses: those same bodies that sit there before me are rows of corpses that will be. And I that speak to you, you hear and see me, you see me breathe and move: this breathing body is my corpse and I am living in my tomb. This is one thing certain of your place of death; you are there now, you sit within your corpses; look no farther: there where you are you will die.
August 6, 2017
His poetry is just stunning. I can't believe we almost didn't get to read it! His friend Bridges (who went on to be poet laureate) was the one who, in 1918, published all of Hopkins's work, decades after he had died of typhoid fever, but he almost didn't because he didn't think they were very special... Well Hopkins went on to be one of the most important literary figures and one of the most widely anthologized poets in English lit, and I doubt many people even know who Bridges is.
Hopkins's poetry feels unbelievably modern because of his innovative form, prosody, and syntax but it also hearkens back to the poetry of Wordsworth at times, especially in his nature sonnets. He's quite difficult to read, in part because he's a a very technical, disorienting poet and in part because he was a very tormented man, particularly toward the end of his career. What you'll find in his poetry is a deep and beautiful reverence for nature, an awe of God that is not tainted by platitudes or sentiment, and language that just leaves you gobsmacked. Truly, truly beautiful.
Hopkins's poetry feels unbelievably modern because of his innovative form, prosody, and syntax but it also hearkens back to the poetry of Wordsworth at times, especially in his nature sonnets. He's quite difficult to read, in part because he's a a very technical, disorienting poet and in part because he was a very tormented man, particularly toward the end of his career. What you'll find in his poetry is a deep and beautiful reverence for nature, an awe of God that is not tainted by platitudes or sentiment, and language that just leaves you gobsmacked. Truly, truly beautiful.
October 29, 2020
I liked the Hopkins selection in the anthology Sacrifice Of Praise, particularly because of his depictions of the natural world and the way he turns it to devotional use, so I decided to explore his work more.
This was a great volume for a self-education in GMH. It includes a good introduction to the poet's life; all of his poetry, including fragments and uncompleted poems, with lots of endnotes available; and a selection of his journal entries, letters, and devotional writings, which opened the door a little on his creative process as well as on his brilliance and his religious life.
It is not, however, easy reading! The poems I met in the anthology are, it turns out, among his most lucid work. The transcendent way he saw the world, and his boldness in fabricating some words and leaving others out, make many of the other poems very daunting. It's a collection I'll come back to as my poetry-reading muscles develop!
This was a great volume for a self-education in GMH. It includes a good introduction to the poet's life; all of his poetry, including fragments and uncompleted poems, with lots of endnotes available; and a selection of his journal entries, letters, and devotional writings, which opened the door a little on his creative process as well as on his brilliance and his religious life.
It is not, however, easy reading! The poems I met in the anthology are, it turns out, among his most lucid work. The transcendent way he saw the world, and his boldness in fabricating some words and leaving others out, make many of the other poems very daunting. It's a collection I'll come back to as my poetry-reading muscles develop!
February 4, 2025
Gerald Manley Hopkins is probably one of the best poets ever but the reason I only gave it four stars was that I would have preferred to get a selection of poems because like any poet there are bound to be the odd flabby one. When his poetry soars, it rises. To me his poetry is very onomatopoeiac and seems to have inspired Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot. If this is not true, then so be it but I see elements of it in their work. The sprung rhythm is metrical originality for the time. Also while I loved reading the correspondence although not awe inspiring, the spiritual ruminations toward the back were for the most part depressing. His theology would not fly today. It is dark and threatening with the odd glimmer of hope. The final retreat notes from St. Stanilaus' College was the exception but also gave a glimpse into his final years wondering what his work was for. Maybe his priestly duties didn't soar, but his poetry forever will.
August 28, 2025
I had never read Hopkins before, because I thought I could guess from his nationality and profession exactly what he would be like—nostalgic, softly reactionary, countryside-Tory, Romantic in the worst way, and filled with patronising disgust towards the Irish who were the only reason he had a job at all. All of these guesses were correct, and also there’s a factor specific to Hopkins personally that put me off him: namely, that he might as well have been the house poet for the CPRE. But our prejudices often lead us astray even when they are rooted in truth, and it has been my immense pleasure to learn this year that Hopkins is the real fucking deal. If anything, he is underrated: for linguistic creativity and sheer poetic craft, I am not sure who matches him in English bar Shakespeare and maybe Yeats. Read him aloud and pay attention to how your mouth moves to make the words: ‘the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!’
April 21, 2024
I've encountered more interesting phone books.
Some of the poems are written in Latin. A lot of the others might just as well be; Hopkins' language is from another century and it's more work than I'm willing to invest to dope out his meanings. Why is the poetry of St. Francis of Assisi, from the twelfth century far more accessible than this poetry from the nineteenth century?
There seems to be a significant amount of poetry here that seeks to explore poetic forms instead of communicating intelligible thoughts to the reader. The man is free to write whatever he chooses and I, as reader, am free to dislike it.
His letters seem to support the previous statement; they seem to be mostly about poetry technology.
This was a major disappointment!
Some of the poems are written in Latin. A lot of the others might just as well be; Hopkins' language is from another century and it's more work than I'm willing to invest to dope out his meanings. Why is the poetry of St. Francis of Assisi, from the twelfth century far more accessible than this poetry from the nineteenth century?
There seems to be a significant amount of poetry here that seeks to explore poetic forms instead of communicating intelligible thoughts to the reader. The man is free to write whatever he chooses and I, as reader, am free to dislike it.
His letters seem to support the previous statement; they seem to be mostly about poetry technology.
This was a major disappointment!
February 4, 2025
The reason I gave this only 4 stars and not 5 was that this included all of G.M.H's poetry and it would have been better for a selection. When Gerald Manley Hopkins' poetry flies, it soars. It is onomatopoeiac, and I think he originated sprung rhythm, which is genius and sets him apart from other poets. I can see his influence on T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas and no doubt influenced others. The correspondence seemed a little flabby and most of the spiritual meditations at the end were of a theology that is particular for that day. I got the idea that he felt he was wasting his latter years. The only exception were the notes from the retreat at St. Stanislau's College which for the most part was interesting and gave an insight into GMH.
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October 17, 2022Good but the editor Phillips has (consciously?) left out a lot material relating to Hopkins’s sexuality (there is a big fat ellipsis in the middle of the sermon at Bedford Leigh) and made no mention of it in the intro. Maybe people didn’t care about that in 1986 when this version first came out but seems like time for a new critical edition that has room for modern scholarship on Hopkins and desire.
April 18, 2020
The highlights are mostly the ones you would expect, though those few continue to surprise and inspire on repeat readings:
- The 32nd stanza of 'The Wreck of the Deutschland'
- 'God's Grandeur'
- 'As kingfishers catch fire'
- 'The Windhover'
- 'Pied Beauty'
- 'Hurrahing in Harvest'
- '(Carrion Comfort)'
- 'That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection'
- The 32nd stanza of 'The Wreck of the Deutschland'
- 'God's Grandeur'
- 'As kingfishers catch fire'
- 'The Windhover'
- 'Pied Beauty'
- 'Hurrahing in Harvest'
- '(Carrion Comfort)'
- 'That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection'
November 24, 2021
"The Wreck of the Deutschland" is one of my new favorite poems. Obviously these are hit or miss because the collection includes all of his poems. The journal and letters are interesting historical documents but I only skimmed over them. The sermons and devotionals are intriguing enough on their own but even more so in light of his verse.
December 5, 2024
I came across this book as I was working at my universitie's library and I am so glad I did. I think Gerard Manley Hopkins became one of my favorites english poet. I loved the descriptions and the correlation with God, despite not being catholic. I think these poema are extremely beautiful and that more people should read this.
January 8, 2020
A collection of immensely beautiful and challenging poetry and prose. The letters in the back of the collection are particularly heart-wrenching and give the reader a true sense of both the pain and ecstasy of Hopkins life.
December 31, 2024
40 pages of some of the best poetry ever written in English, unfortunately there's over 300 pages of other stuff of varying interest, from decent examples of cloying victorian poetry to excerpts from sermons in which I have 0 interest
December 31, 2019
Truly a master of English, Hopkins commands the language like no other; simply superb.
January 19, 2021
He was definitely a major influence on James Joyce; and I saw my ambitions realized in my own unwritten poems.
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