To Gerard Manley Hopkins

Your spirit hovered quivering, poised on air
of sense and sound, charged like a lightning rod:
now flashing out to seize the grace of God,
now plummeting in darkness and despair -
despair! Did wisdom really bring you there,
where tired generations trod and trod,
where feet convey no feeling, iron-shod,
where hopelessness hangs heavy everywhere?

Sometimes I wonder, did you understand,
without the dark your candle could not glow?
Your soul was tortured by self-reprimand,
self-crucified, self-loathing; yet I know
the God you loved and hated took your hand
at last, and led you safe where no storms blow.

I find it curiouser and curiouser that two of our sonneteers have decided to address certain poets -- Hopkins here, Millay over there -- and explain something to them, or us, about their lives and work.

Hopkins invites us to join him in a dark night of the soul, Millay asks us to exult in Eros. What more is there to know?

Noteworthy, too, that neither poem attempts to capture the spirit of the poets featured. No sprung rhythm here, no ecstasy there.

I bow before the skilled execution of both sonnets, huzzah, but thought the above questions were worth posing, and pondering.

Kate, I think ecstasy would have been out of place in the sonnet on Millay, which had other fish to fry. But I'm with you on this one. Since it it, at least in part, a tribute to Hopkins, it should have borrowed something from him in addition to some of his words and oblique, graceful references to familiar poems. I would have liked more metrical daring. All but the last three lines are end-stopped, and the tone is one of lovely but un-Hopkins-like serenity.

I can identify with the urge to talk back to favorite poets, to soothe their anxieties, reassure them, or question some of their actions (wouldn't it have been better if they were perfect?). But in the long run, what I hear is not the subject's voice, but the speaker's. That is the only way it can be: the speaker is not the subject. Yet for me the fierceness, inconsolability, single-mindedness of the original poets is the only way they could be. To wish them otherwise is to wish them not to be the way they were, and who knows what might be lost that way? This is a comforting and well-made poem, but to me it does not capture Hopkins' spirit.

Susan

I wonder if this was meant to capture Hopkin's spirit, this poem is so well constructed and having an inkling into who the author is I think it well within his compass to have included more Hopkinsesque sprung rhythm had such been his desire.

I interpret this as poet talking to poet, saying the things he would have said to Hopkins had they been out for an evening stroll together. I like the comfort offered and the couplet is just right, as, I think, is this poet's voice for this.

This is a powerful and extremely well-made sonnet. First grant the near-impossibility of the Italian Octave in English. I find most attempts lame and this one seamless. The author has no intention of imitating Hopkins (except perhaps his tip of the hat, "trod and trod), and in fact the mode of expression he has chosen is a rebuke to Father Hopkins' florid style, just as his matter is a rebuke to the poet's tortured life. Like so many poems by Wilbur, particularly late Wilbur, I hear a poem written out of an assured serenity which I do not share, but which I greatly respect.

I'm in the Jim and Tim camp. I liked this one immediately, and was flabbergasted that so many others were sorry that it lacked "ecstacy". It starts with out-of-body imagery and proceeds through several dynamic, emotionally-charged verbs (and verbal adjectives) from lightning into the abyss, with ranting repetition along the way. If that's not ecstatic, I'm at a loss to describe what would be!

I love the repetition throughout this piece, reinforced by a masterful use of alliteration--especially the trinity of "selfs" in the ending, with alliteration smoothing the transition from "loathing" into "loved," "at last," and "led."

As for the lack of Hopkins-like metrical irregularity, I for one am certainly am not bemoaning it. I'm Little Miss Metronome, I guess--or Little Miss Metamucil? I agree, the poet is speaking with his or her own voice, not Hopkins', and I don't think a lack of irregularity should ever be viewed as a fault. Then again, I'm but a rank newbie.

Julie Stoner

[This message has been edited by Julie Stoner (edited March 24, 2003).]

Many thanks to all who read and commented on this.
It wasn't my intention to mimic GMH, and so I avoided sprung rhythm.
Tim, interesting you should pick up on the treading generations. I believe GMH was echoing Keats (Nightingale).
Answering somebody's queries about publications, this has been in these:
Avatar Review
Candelabrum
The Sonnet at the Millennium (Open University, 2000, Anthology)
Susquehanna Quarterly
Poetry Scotland
(possibly others)
Best wishes,
David
http://www.davidgwilymanthony.co.uk/


[This message has been edited by David Anthony (edited March 28, 2003).]