Hopkins: Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I enjoyed both the poems and the journals. The journals show that Hopkins was a detailed observer of nature, of words, of people. He was fascinated by quirks of all kinds--quirky words, quirky accents, quirky trees, quirky cloud formations . . . To Hopkins, every thing, every single object in nature, had a unique place in God's design and a unique role in showing His glory. Every thing "selves." That is, every thing points to God just by being what it is. This is reflected in his poem "God's Grandeur":

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 áll trádes, 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.

I love those last two lines--a contrast between the infinite variety of nature and the changelessness of God. The last line, abruptly short, shows that after considering these things, the poet is speechless.

Of course, Hopkins' poetry is amazing. I have been familiar with some of his poems since college, but this book introduced me to a lot of new ones. I also read "The Wreck of the Deutschland" in full for the first time. This poem especially shows Hopkins' complex style, in which he uses original rhythms and original words. Hopkins' style reflects the inifluence of Anglo-Saxon poetry--a lot of alliteration, and an attention to not the number of total syllables in a line, but the number of stressed syllables. The syntax is frequently convoluted. It takes some work for the reader, but it is very rewarding, especially when he points us to the glory of God. For one more taste of his style, here's the last part of "The Wreck of the Deutschland":

Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness
of us, be a crimson-cresseted east,
More brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign rolls,
Pride, rose, prince, hero of us, high-priest,
Our heart's charity's hearth's fire, our thoughts'
chivalry's throng's Lord.

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