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.
|