Being Poetry

When I was in high school, it was difficult to get books of contemporary poetry. I didn’t live in a big city. I didn’t live near a bookstore except for the one in the mall. The library didn’t really have a fabulous contemporary poetry section. And honestly, I don’t think that any of my teachers owned a book of poetry that they might share with me.

So, I was a young poet steeped in the classics, mostly poetry written by dead white guys who were born before 1930, oftentimes considerably before 1930. I don’t think this hurt me, much, but I sure did put a lot of mileage on the two volume anthology of poetry that my parents owned (and now sits on my shelf). I’ve admitted my great love for Yeats that grew from that collection, but not my secret love for Gerard Manley Hopkins.

My adoration for Hopkins was covert. It was a little freaky that I so loved this Jesuit priest’s work. He was melancholy, his verse irregular, and his subject matter consistently religious. It was his attraction to nature that really hooked me and that sprung rhythm. His word choices were so innovative and odd compared to the other poems that surrounded him in the anthology.

It wasn’t until I got to college and learned a lot more about him that my affinity for his work became clearer. (If you want to read a really in depth study of his life and work, The American Academy of Poets has one here that is just superb.) But even now, when I’ve a bookshelf of contemporary poets to read, I often find myself going back to luxuriate in Hopkins work. I will include a few below so you, too, can appreciate his beautiful use of the language.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
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 Whát I do is me: for that I came.	

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

…

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things--
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
       And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

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.
...

The Windhover

Caught this morning morning's minion, king-
  dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
  As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!  

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!  

  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

…

And if you haven’t gotten enough, check this out.