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Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1899) was a English poet and Jesuit priest. He converted from the Anglican church to Catholicism while studying at Oxford under the influence of John Henry Newman, one of man important people with whom he maintained correspondence. He developed at Oxford a friendship with the poet Robert Bridges, later poet laureate of England.
When he entered the Jesuits he burned all his poetry, but when his religious sentiment called forth a new kind of poetry he wrote while telling almost no one about the poems. While never abandoning Aquinas Hopkins began studying Duns Scotus who places emphasis on the uniqueness of each thing and person and in having exacting perception. This fit Hopkins temperament and guided the way he looked at things in his poetry. His poetry is a fusion of Aquinas, Scotus and the world that he sees before him to the service of the God he loves. Because he studied Scotus, however, when he took his final theological exam in the Jesuits, he failed, not relying solely on Aquinas for his answers, and he could not advance in the order. He studied Welsh, but gave it up when his superior suggested that unless he was going to use it in his mission in Whales to draw closer to people, it might not be a worthy pursuit. Yet the Welsh language enriched his poetry in the same way that it enriched Dylan Thomas's. He also had studied Old English and the poetry in that language, which , similarly to the Welsh, relied on internal rhyme devices, like alliteration and assonance. Hopkins did not publish his poetry, sharing them with Robert Bridges and a few others, mainly other poets whom he knew. Bridges revered him through he sometimes criticized his poetry, and in 1918, years after Hopkins death, Brides, as poet laureate had them published.
This U-Tube embed is a five part documentary on Hopkins, so start with the first and click onwards.
Lets take a look at one of the poems read on this documentary:
As Kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame
As kingfisher catch fire,dragonflies draw flame
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring;like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves-goes itself, myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me:for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices:
Keeps grace: that keeps his goings graces
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is-
Christ-for Christ plays in ten thousands places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
Hopkins here, as in most of his poetry, uses a sprung rhythm, that is the same number of beats as a regular line, but sprung from there position in the line to fall in differing places. This technique falls between classically metered poetry and the loose rhythm of free verse, such as in Whitman. However in this poem some of his lines have a more regular meter. Hopkins often mixed the two as if to place emphasis on why his meter varies in the other lines. He uses assonance and alliteration to spring the meter free and make it fall where he may it. (To spring free my grammar to make my point!)
In this poem Hopkins begins, as he often does showing the action and beauty of God in creation. But that is just a begging point. But then Hopkins does something different, swinging on the cord of a bell he carries us from the natural to the human world. Just as each natural thing serves it's purpose for God, so to does each human being, doing for me , that I came for. Each just man justices, and by that he is Christ for others, part of Christ playing in ten thousand places that the Father can see him lovely in limbs, see him through the features of men's faces.
Wikipedia on Hopkins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins
Poems of Hopkins
http://www.bartleby.com/122/
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