'Like shuttles fleet the clouds, and after/ A drop of shade rolls over field and flock ... ' Photograph: Getty
Back in November, several commenters on 'Poem of the Week' were enthusiastically discussing the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and I promised to come back to GMH in a future post. Hopkins's poetry, when you first read it, is a jolt of lightning - and then, it's as if that lightning stayed in the sky, perfectly natural, the true daylight of things. I found making a choice extremely difficult. The major poems are almost all 'anthology' pieces: also, for me, they are associated with studying poetry at a Catholic grammar school where Hopkins was prized more for his religious message than his amazing technique. Finally, I decided to go for some slightly less well-known fragments - a little miscellany from one of the brilliant literary 'sketchbooks.' These poetic notes de-familiarise Hopkins: they lose the religious context and the leaping rhythms which are part of that great, original Magnificat he sings, but foreground the descriptive genius, and recapture the sheer surprise of a first reading. Because they are incomplete, the sketches resonate like haiku - and perhaps there really is something a little haiku-like in Hopkins: that intense, devoted concentration on the thing as it is, and the natural sense of economy which is most obviously apparent in his use of the curtal sonnet.
In fact, his writing never flaunts verbal pyrotechnics for the sake of it. He was a visual artist as well as poet, and I believe his theories of instress and inscape originate as much in an artist's sense of the clean, undecorated line as in the teachings of John Duns Scotus. (This isn't to underestimate the wonderful textures and tonalities his poetry contains). Hopkins's line becomes infused with and energised by its subject - almost as if the subject had been trusted to wield the paintbrush. That's the effect - but of course, contrary to the essentially unobtrusive verbal technique associated with 'the haiku spirit', a richly-stocked individual mind, a mind brimmed with Shakespeare and the Bible and the Greek, Latin and Welsh languages he studied, is an endlessly active 'mediator' in his poetic picture.
From 'Sundry Fragments and Images'
i The wind, that passes by so fleet, Runs his fingers through the wheat, And leaves the blades, where'er he will veer, Tingling between dusk and silver.
iii Like shuttles fleet the clouds, and after A drop of shade rolls over field and flock; The wind comes breaking here and there with laughter: The violet moves and copses rock.
vi - now the rain, A brittle sheen, runs upward like a cliff, Flying a bow.
vii - and on their brittle green quils Shake the balanced daffodils.
xxii How looks the night? There does not miss a star. The million sorts of unaccounted motes Now quicken, sheathed in the yellow galaxy. There is no parting or bare interstice Where the stint compass of a skylark's wings Would not put out some tiny golden centre.
xxxiv The sun just risen Flares his wet brilliance in the dintless heaven
xxxv We live to see How Shakespeare's England weds with Dante's Italy.
xxxvi The moonlight-mated glowless glowworms shine.
xxxix Glazed water vaulted o'er a drowsy stone.
xl They are not dead who die, but they are lost who live.
(From The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Fourth Edition, Ed WH Gardner and NH MacKenzie, OUP, 1970).
OUR POETRY COMPETITION IS CLOSED - NOW IT'S TIME TO CHOOSE THE WINNER!
Participants have been posting their poems on the topic of SOUL FRUIT or SOLE FRUIT for the last two weeks, and you can read the first batch of entries here and the second batch here.
Please choose your favourite poem, and post your choice, quoting first line and comment number, on THIS Poem of the Week thread. Make sure you have picked the author's final version - as some people did minor rewriting after their initial posts. One nomination is allowed per person, and should arrive by midday on Sunday January 6, please. The winner - and perhaps a runner up or two - will be next week's Poem(s) of the Week.
