Poetry

Review: The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins

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The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins, Margaret R. Ellsberg ed., Foreword by Dana Gioia. Walden, NY: Plough Publishing House, 2017.

Summary: An exploration of the life and faith of Gerard Manley Hopkins through commentary and a selection of his poetry, letters, journal entries, and sermons.

The life of Gerard Manley Hopkins seems to me a life of startling contrasts. He writes wonderfully vibrant poetry using innovative rhythms–poems that often are celebration of the glory of God evident in the creation. At the same time, he is a devout Jesuit, whose submission to the order meant largely a life as priest and academic examiner in slums of Liverpool, Glasgow, London and Dublin. He died of typhoid contracted from antiquated plumbing. We follow the man who burnt his early poems when he converted to Catholicism and entered the Jesuits, whose life was shaped by the Exercises of St. Ignatius, whose passion was God’s glory, and the incarnation of Christ, revealed afresh in every Eucharist. We also see a man deeply torn between his artistic sensibilities and the physically and psychically crushing routines of most of his life as a Jesuit, to which he seemed ill-suited, that comes through in the anguished “Terrible Sonnets.”

Margaret Ellsberg weaves the narrative of Hopkins life and faith through a combination of commentary, and selections of poetry, letters, sermons, and journals throughout the course of his short life. Because there are only 49 of his poems extant, many of these are included in this selection, set in the context of his life. It is fascinating that Robert Bridges, who subsequently published his works, struggled to make sense of them and found at least one sufficiently difficult that (in Hopkins words) “you wd. not for any money read my poem again (“The Wreck of the Deutschland”). Ellsberg’s work gives us clues, sometimes from Hopkins himself, to the understanding of his poetry, and that is what makes this work most attractive, along with the selections of his poetry.

As much as I love Hopkins poetry (my favorite is “As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame”), the title of this work (part of a series sharing “The Gospel In…”) mystifies me in some ways because the gospel may have evoked praise and wonder with regard to God’s work in the world but mostly despair with regard to his own life. Wonder and devotion there is in great measure, but a sense of peace, of wholeness seems lacking. There is the dutiful fulfillment of assignments that seem poorly fitted to who he is, which makes one wonder why he chose the Jesuits and the priesthood. Compounding his struggle was physical weakness, and perhaps a melancholy character. But gospel also implies “good news”, hope for us in our fragile humanity. Only on his deathbed does he find some peace, as he whispers over and over, “I’m so happy, I’m so happy.”

Perhaps there is something of temperament in all of this, an artist not fully at home in his world, torn by the tension between “God’s Grandeur” and the ugliness of much of what he endured around him. One wonders if different choices or different assignments might have made a difference. Or was it something “unreconciled” in his “gospel” that seemed to result in a life of great devotion but little contentment or peace?

Yet we have this great poetry, much of it an effervescing abundance captured in the fourteen lines of a sonnet. Hopkins life remains an enigma to me, but I can thank his Maker and mine for the gift of his writing. I leave you with “God’s Grandeur”

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs–
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

____________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer Program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

A Poet in Your Pocket

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John_Adams_by_Gilbert_Stuart,_c._1800-1815,_oil_on_canvas_-_National_Gallery_of_Art,_Washington_-_DSC09727

John Adams, by Gilbert Stuart, 1815

John Adams once said, “You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.”

In reading Marilyn McEntyre’s book, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, one of the practices she commends is the reading and memorizing of poetry. In a later chapter, she writes about the delights of wordplay, including wordplay in poetry. In her chapter “Practice Poetry” she writes:

“What the discipline of poetry requires most of all is caring about words and caring for words. I do not believe we steward language well without some regular practice of poesis–reading poetry, learning some by heart, and writing–if not verse as such, at least sentences crafted with close attention to the cadence and music and the poetic devices that offer nonrational, evocative, intuitive, associative modes of understanding” (p. 145).

Reading this chapter made me realize the relative lack of poetry in my life. Apart from the Hebrew poetry of the Psalms, which I find myself regularly turning to, to give words to my prayers, I have little poetry in my life. You may notice I have not reviewed works of poetry here.

In college I first came in contact with the poetry of T. S. Eliot. As bleak as “The Wasteland” was, I felt it captured an essence of his time, and our own, in words that resonated deeply. I thrilled to the mysterious question in this stanza toward the end:

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?

 

Who is the third…I wonder still?

Another memory of a poem shared was the time our Dead Theologians reading group, between books, spent a morning parsing preacher and poet George Herbert’s “Love (III),” one of many in a collection known as “The Temple.” He wrote,

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
        Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
        From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
        If I lack’d anything.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
        Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
        I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
        “Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
        Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
        “My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
        So I did sit and eat.

It left me with a deepened sense of wonder of the “Love that bade me welcome.”

There was a time when people memorized both the scriptures, and poetry, two things very akin to each other, it seems to me. There was a day when both the psalms of the Bible and the sonnets of Shakespeare were things we carried around with us, either in our pockets, or in a pocket of our minds. I wonder if it led to a different sensibility, and as McEntyre suggests, a care for words?

In researching this post, I learned that there is a Poem in Your Pocket Day each year during April, National Poetry Month. This year, it falls on April 27, 2017. I discovered that the day was initiated by the Office of the Mayor of New York City in 2002. I found this poem posted at the Mayor’s website (I’m not sure if it was from that first day):poem6-monday

It was plainly intended to be cut out and placed in our pockets. I wonder what would happen if this practice were adopted by more of our political leaders?

I also discovered that Everyman’s Library has a collection of more than sixty “Pocket Poets” books, allowing us to have a somewhat more durable and attractive way to carry poets in our pockets.

I wonder if it might not in fact be time for me to have some poetry in my life. Maybe some of you are further along this way than I. I would love to hear your suggestions of poems that have been life-giving to you, or at least taken you deeper into a care for words. If I receive some suggestions, I’ll post them on Poem in Your Pocket Day!