Customer Reviews

Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)

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Oxford University Press has done it again! This book is an absolutely wonderful compilation of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry, letters, and prose. With all of his poems (including fragments of poems), as well as letters and spiritual writings related to his conversion and his joining of the Jesuit order, this book not only gives the reader a wonderful selection of his work, but also an interesting insight into the life of Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins. I would recommend this master of sprung verse to all.

A great many people would like to read poetry, even recite some, but don't know where to start. Start here. Why? Hopkins is both easy to read and a unique voice. His "sprung rythm" results in a beat running all through the poem that has something in common with rock music and something else in common with beat poetry and something in common with rap. In short, it's poetry to be read out loud, exulting in the words and the wordplay.

Hopkins is too good to be hidden away in dusty tomes for English majors to drag out once in their careers. One of the early editors of the Oxford collection was Charles Williams, a fellow Inkling and friend of C.S. Lewis. His goal was to make Hopkins available to more readers, and later editors seem to have echoed this goal.

Almost everyone who reads him gets captivated by a favorite poem. Mine is "God's Grandeur", which begins: "The world is charged with the grandeur of God; it will fan out like shining from shook foil." I don't think "fan" is the right word here; I don't have the book handy and I'm reciting from memory. But that's my point; these are poems that bring back the joy of quoting a few lines here and there. Another great poem is "The Kingfisher". Then there is "The Binsey Poplars".

Another reason to dip into Hopkins is that he is so post-modern. He wrestled with the dark night of the soul, the topic of practically all contemporary alt-rock. His own journey led him to join a monastery and give up writing poetry, after which he was deeply sad. Wisely, his insightful director allowed and encouraged him to return to his calling, which in following he produced these amazing poems. This Oxford opens the door to what for many will be a new and delightful world, and if anyone can re-enchant poetry for our generation, it's Hopkins.

This is a good, generous selection of Hopkins poetry and letters. I picked it up because I am intrigued by Hopkins innovations in poetry, and by the influence of his religous vocation. I wanted to compare him to Donne and other similar poets.

A big volume for the money, it starts with a good introduction. The only reason to downgrade it from a five-star value is that it is a paperback printed on what feels like a pulpy paper, and I wonder how the pages will withstand yellowing and how the binding will hold up if the book sees much use.

The poet-priest Gerard Manly Hopkins was imbued with the gift of natural poetic expression, and the tragedy of his life was that he saw it as something other than the God-given gift that it truly was. But due to almost fanatic scrupulousness, he relegated his work to the camp of literary narcissism, that-if read by a public at large-it would in no way, shape or form, enhance or open their perception to the engulfing gloriousness of faith and God and the Church. Hopkins, who struggled to curtail his output due to a clash of conscience, wanted to use his poetry as a catalyst for conversions. But even in the epicenter of creativity when his greatest works were produced, he was always disheartened with an inner turmoil that gnawed at him and made him feel that his poetry was not in line with his religious calling. But atop that and probably more dispiriting was his heavy walk to conversion into the Catholic Church-which unmasked an intense yearning for a more esoteric depth and its personal aftereffects-most notibly, his evolving solemnity which distanced him from his friends and family, ultimately leaving his mother to pen him a letter of protest regarding his conversion whereby she wrote, 'Gerard, my darling boy, are you indeed gone from me?'

St. John of the Cross wrote the Dark Night of the Soul, and after reading various poems-a reader will definitely concur that Manley privately lived that experience to its fullest, most evident in his poem 'No Worst' when he writes in the first four stanzas:

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?

A true expression of the dark night. The palpability of the soul being redone is so genuinely conveyed, one can almost feel the mental wounds that are in exact conformity with Christ Jesus who was crucified before us. But with Manley's poetry, it is not all doom and gloom, for there are expressions of intense natural beauty and sincere love of the Divine, as noted with 'Love me as I love thee':

Love me as I love thee. O double sweet!
But if though hate me who love thee, albeit
Even thus I have the better of thee:
Thou canst not hate so much as I do love thee.

The potry of Gerard Manley Hopkins is evocative of so many emotions: faith (Easter Communion), God (Thee, God, I come from), Mary (The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe), God through nature (Heaven-Haven: A nun takes the veil), the saints (St Thecla), death (O Death, Death). Each of the bracketed poems is indicative of a truth about us as a people and what we are striving and hoping for, with all our flaws, stains and imperfections. Poetry can speak volumes, and Hopkins illustrates the good as well as the bad of the Church. He airs it out, and by so doing, allows an element of reality to come through for the rest of us.

The only other edition of Hopkins I had was falling apart. Oxford's edition, at this point, seems sturdy. The introduction was interesting without being tedious. The notes are good. The paper was thick enough to prevent type shadows from the opposite page. I can't remember feeling the pinch when I paid for it. There is not much to rave about except the sturdy edition of the poems of Hopkins, and all literate people should have a copy on his or her bookshelf.

Hopkins was not a prolific poet. And his prose writings too are not extensive though there are Letters and a Journal and Diary. But Hopkins was one of the most original poets the English language has had. He went back to the Anglo -Saxon origins of English and devised a new way of reading and writing Poetry. His focus was not on traditional methods of scanning, but rather on the stresses of the line. He was too one of the greatest religious poets the language has known. His faith and strong questioning relationship to God is expressed in some of his greatest poems, such as 'The World is Filled with the Grandeur of God' and 'Thou Art Indeed Just Lord'. He wrote some of the most memorable and beautiful lines in English poetry. He also wrote movingly about other people as in his great poem 'Felix Randal the Farrier'. His poems numbered forty- one to forty- six are among the greatest poems ever written about 'despair and depression'. His love of Nature and his deep feeling for Beauty pervade his work. He was the master of the memorable line and he is a writer who the reader can return to again and again in order to find new depth and new Beauty. This edition contains much of the Prose and background material which can help in understanding the Poems.

Gerard Manley Hopkins was one of the greatest poets ever. The way he uses language was simply sui generis:

Where whatever's prized and passes of us, everything that's fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and swiftly away with, done away with, undone...

The world is charged with the grandeur of God
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil...

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there...

His language is lush and musical, lyrical and biting all at once. There are only a few who have handled the English language with the ability of Hopkins.

This collection of his is an excellent one, to be kept by your bedside, and, when the world is too much, to be savored.

I read some of G.M. Hopkins in high school. These poems have a certain transcendental quality to them. If you enjoy "going back to nature" then read these selections. timeless writing by a genius.