It was a hard thing to undo this knot (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

I took a little break from daily updating these past couple weeks, but I think I am ready to start anew with this quotidian effort.

Whenever I have run across a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins I have been duly impressed. I find his poetry to be technically impressive, philosophical, searching and kind. I think he'd have been a cool dude to have a late-night conversation with. Anyway, his poem for today did nothing to disabuse me of my prior opinions.

It's a short (love short poems!!), rhyming couplet poem that makes me think of truths in physics and in art/writing. Oh and it also makes me reflect on how pretty rainbows are. :)

If we both look at a rainbow in the sky, we are actually looking at two different bows. (True!) The slight difference in our perspectives is enough for the light to hit the drops in a slightly different way creating a yes, similar, but truly 100% distinct rainbow.

So personal perspective changes everything. In nature and then so in writing as well. Two people can read a poem or a story and come away with two different yet valid versions of the work.

Ooh, maybe the fact that the poem starts and ends with the same line is a nod to that concept.

Favorite line: "The rainbow shines, but only in the thought / Of him that looks."

The rainbow shines, but only in the thought
Of him that looks. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23645#sthash.3OLR9hX2.dpuf

The rainbow shines, but only in the thought
Of him that looks. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23645#sthash.3OLR9hX2.dpuf

The Windhover (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Another poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I just find such such joy in Hopkins' joy and his love and use of language. He's having fun and so I have fun. Squee!

This poem is about a bird, the windhover, that seems to pause in mid-flight as it hunts. Pauses perhaps like a person does when they read the obscene over-use of alliteration in this poem. Oh! Maybe that's why only the first stanza has so much alliteration. It's the skimming, the pause before the strike that occurs in the last stanzas.

The strike! The kill. In a way, it's about the bird killing its dinner. It could also be about any result after a long effort. Er, that is, if the result is a bloody and well-fought one.

This poem is a sonnet. For show, I guess. It's not romantic in the way Shakespeare's sonnets are. I don't really know why else the form would be used.

Favorite line: "Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion."

Spring and Fall: To a young child (Gerald Manley Hopkins)

Oh boy! I didn't know this poem was written by Gerald Manley Hopkins. I adore Hopkins. I knew this poem before tonight, but if asked, I would have said it were written by William Blake. It just seems more his style. This poem doesn't really have the flash that I normally associate with Hopkins.

Death comes to all, eh? An old poem, a universal truth. Funny how those two go together. Maybe there is no flash because the topic is so somber. Maybe Hopkins was in a depressive state.

Gleeful or somber, he's a talented guy. Who else would take the image of a child and an autumn tree and spin the whole of a human life and then reconnect it to the very basic, indivisible childlike self.

Gosh, I love Hopkins!

Favorite line: "Margaret, are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?"

Pied Beauty (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

I do love this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I love the almost ridiculous over-(?)use of alliteration and the dizziness all that sound creates. I love how the wall of intense sound, the can't-cut-your-way-through-because-it's-so-tangled sound breaks only for the last line which was the impetus for Hopkins to write the whole thing: "Praise him."

The whole poem is a prayer of praise. I like how Hopkins' pure joy at the natural world around him is expressed. You (or rather I) can't read this poem without 1.) feeling a little baffled 2.) feeling happy.

I feel a little baffled since this poem doesn't ever (until the end) take a pause for a breath. He just throws adjective after adjective at you until all you are left with is not really a semblance of understanding, but rather a canvas full of brightly splattered paint and scribbles. It takes a second read-through for me to be able to distinguish shapes in that canvas.

But when I do, I cannot help but feel happier. It's hard not to feel happy when surrounded by or reading about people as supremely happy as N is in this poem. Ecstatically happy. And the fact that he is so intensely happy because of fish and songbirds and a cow? The depth he finds in those simple joys is enough to make anyone (er, me) break out in the hugest smile.

Favorite line: "GLORY be to God for dappled things—"