[Philip Quinlan]

Prompted by some other threads on these pages (and a failed attempt to start one of my own a little while ago), as well as a rather good article in "Poetry", http://www.poetryfoundation.org/jour...html?id=182786 I went back again to G M Hopkins.

My return visit was a delight I have to say.

I had (almost) forgotten what it was like to read poetry that was so "meant" in the sense of conveying the poet's own genuine delight at simply being in the world.

I guess that all poetry cannot be like that, nor would we want it to be. But it does seem to me sometimes that craft and technique have almost (in some arenas) ousted "feeling" as an acceptable motivation for writing poetry.

Hopkins was no doubt ahead of (and hence misunderstood in) his time. There is no doubting his technique or craft but somehow it is used in service of something else - the desire to convey, as well as he might, truthful emotion.

I have heard poetry called "a fictive utterance" and have even heard poets say that one "shouldn't let the truth get in the way of a good story" (which is the same thing really, only more crudely put). However there is no substitute (in my conception) for that mysterious alchemy by which a poet conveys that he is in fact "telling the truth" emotionally. And if the language must be bent a little to accommodate the alchemy - so be it. It is (as I have said elsewhere in these pages) the servant, not the master of the muse. Sometimes that happens, paradoxically, when you allow the words to simply "have their way" with you.

I have put this in General Talk just as a statement of belief. However if anyone is interested in developing this thread it might be better placed in MoM.

I, for one, would welcome more discussion about the aforementioned alchemy with reference to the great exponents of it (whether formalist or not - which seems a pretty sterile distinction in this context). Not by any means to decry discussion on form or technique.

I write as an unashamed lover of "the ecstatic voice" in poetry, and one who would like to hear it a little more often at least.

Two recent, wonderful examples in these pages were:

Mary Meriam's - Leaf

and

Cally Conan-Davies' - Netted

No doubt I have missed more in the past.

Philip