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A Commentary on the Sonnets of G.M. Hopkins

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I had a professor tell me once that it was not T.S. Eliot who was the father of modern poetry but that Eliot and Pound took inspiration not just from the metaphysical poets but also Hopkins. Hopkins is very, very hard to read (at least for me) because of the many, many layers of meaning (historical, linguistical, religious, intertextual references, "sprung rhyme", etc.) compressed in such short time. He is a all-around poet. He is a master of form and technique as well as imagination. His poems are of a religious focus mostly. And I'll say this, he is such a wonderful poet that after reading his sonnets, despite being turned off by church at an early age, I walked away from the book with an illuminated respect of the basic and raw ideas of Christ. BUT REMEMBER, what is most important is the craft of the poems. This book is a great commentary and Peter Milward, S.J., has studied Hopkins extensively. It is short, this book is to the point but doesn't leave anything key out. It's format is great. After each Hopkins sonnet is a commentary on the sonnet and provides immediate response. After reading this book, a whole new world of Hopkins will open to you, and perhaps this will lead you to other poets, both modern and metaphysical and even Old English, since Hopkins draws from the poetic styles of many period of English verse.

I cannot imagine a reader of Hopkins who will not be instructed and delighted by this work. It reads the sonnets of Hopkins in part by dividing them into the light and dark, the early 'healthy' and later ' sick and despairing' ones. I read the commentary of one of Hopkins' greatest poems 'God's Grandeur' and though I have myself read and reread the poem tens of times learned fundamental truths about it that I had not known. For instance the division between the world 'charged'with the grandeur, the sudden electric-like greatness of God, and the slow oozing to oil 'gathered to greatness' quality of God. The author of this book is like Hopkins a Jesuit and has a deep understanding of the religious thought as well as the poetic and literary devices. There is a wonderful appendix in which Hopkins connection to Shakespeare is explored.
It is possible to argue that Hopkins is the most original English poet of the past two centuries. His substituting the system of stresses for that of syllables in creating his poetry seemed to liberate English poetry and set it off in a new direction. The intensity and beauty of his work are unsurpassed, as is his original perception of nature.
This is a singularly rich and original commentary of one of the most singular poets the English language has known.