|
|
Don Share
Top ten things you may not have known about G.M. Hopkins
1.a.) He was home schooled until he was about ten, and then almost got expelled from the school he eventually attended. 2.) The Hopkins family motto was Esse quan videri – “To be rather than to seem.” 3.) By the time Hopkins had begun writing poems seriously, the best selling poetry book of the century was John Keble’s The Christian Year, which went through 150 editions and sold 350,000 copies. 4.) When Hopkins saw Tintern Abbey, made famous by Wordsworth, he declared it to be merely “typical English workmanship.” OK, his actual words were “typical English work.” 5.) This is how close in time Hopkins is to us: his sister Katie lived until 1933 and his sister Millicent until 1946; his brother Lionel – an agnostic - lived till 1952, having never understood his brother’s path in life. 6.) Hopkins’ father Manley was also a poet, and dedicated one of his books to his friend, the comic- and picture-poet Thomas Hood. 7.) Hopkins’ father was in the insurance business, a self-made man who lifted himself from poverty to master French, Latin, and Greek on his own. 8.) Hopkins’ family had many ties to… Hawaii! 9.) Hopkins’ maternal grandfather was a doctor who got his medical training in London with Keats. 10.) Hopkins' first published poem consisted of thirty-two lines in terza rima. These facts gleaned from Paul Mariani's new biography, Gerard Manley Hopkins, published this fall by Viking. The picture of Hopkins above is a self-portrait. CommentsIn my 56 odd years of experience, anyway, when somebody - poets, non-poets, anybody - bursts into memorized recitation - the verse is most-often that of GM Hopkins. (Disclaimer : I grew up in a town in Minnesota called Hopkins. I went to a school there called Blake. So did poet Allen Grossman. And we shall build Jerusalem in England's green & pleasant land.) Funny you should mention lepers. This is from Hopkins' unfinished verse drama, "St. Winefred’s Well:" O now while skies are blue, now while seas are salt, He also thought the poet closest to him in mind was . . . Walt Whitman! From a letter he wrote to Robert Bridges: , , , first I may as well say what I should not otherwise have said, that I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like my own than any other man’s living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession. And this also makes me the more desirous to read him and the more determined that I will not… Enjoyed the Hopkins trivia. I'm in Oxford for a study stint where I first became interested in Hopkins. I used to walk daily past St Aloyisus, a Roman Catholic church on St Giles Rd. They used to have a sign that made reference to John Henry Newman and Gerard Manley Hopkins--Hopkins served briefly there as a curate. But the sign is gone and I wonder why? OK, I saved the best for last. Did you know that when Hopkins was in a Jesuit seminary he - in Paul Mariani's description - "hypnotized a duck by holding its beak down on a black table and drawing parallel chalk lines from its beak outwards"? But best of all is Hopkins' own explanation of how it worked: it was, G.M.H. wrote, "the fascinating instress of the straight white stroke" that does the trick... All threads die a natural death, and I'll let this one be... right after I add something from one of H.'s letters to Robert Bridges, on their contemporary, Walt Whitman - whom Hopkins reluctantly acknowledged as an influence: "I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman's mind to be more like my own than any other man's living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession. And this also makes me the more desirous to read him and the more determined that I will not." Around the same time he wrote that, H. was seen entering the rooms of his Jesuit digs at Stonyhurst - as the Rector recorded it - "publicly through the window, lately, in order to save time by not having to go round by the corridor." And H. was also seen in the swimming bath... with all his clothes on! With that, I depart from sharing some details in the life of holy Hopkins! |
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Wanda ColemanOlena Kalytiak Davis Forrest Gander Lavinia Greenlaw Javier Huerta Travis Nichols STAFF WRITERS
Michael MarcinkowskiFred Sasaki Don Share Elizabeth Stigler Nick Twemlow Emily Warn PREVIOUS WRITERS
Christian BökStephen Burt Kwame Dawes Linh Dinh Daisy Fried Alan Gilbert Kenneth Goldsmith Rigoberto González Major Jackson Ada Limón Jeffrey McDaniel Ange Mlinko Mark Nowak Lucia Perillo D.A. Powell Reginald Shepherd Patricia Smith A.E. Stallings Rachel Zucker RECENT COMMENTS
Political Poetry: An Epistolary Conversation (5)Hayden Carruth (1921-2008) (3) Empire in Funkville (7) ¡Maldición! (3) Read the foreign and the dead (3) RECENT POSTS
Hayden Carruth (1921-2008) (Emily Warn)Read the foreign and the dead (Lavinia Greenlaw) O LITERATI, GET UP! (Olena Kalytiak Davis) POETRY + MUSIC = INSPIRATION? (Wanda Coleman) Into the Mouths of Volcanoes (Forrest Gander) CATEGORY ARCHIVE
Poetry magazineAWP Arts Awards Biography Books Criticism Distribution Education Film International Language Music News Obituaries Outrageous Photographs Poems Poetry Out Loud Poetry and the Internet Politics Readings TV Translation poetryfoundation.org AUTHOR ARCHIVES
Christian BökStephen Burt Wanda Coleman Olena Kalytiak Davis Kwame Dawes Linh Dinh Daisy Fried Forrest Gander Alan Gilbert Kenneth Goldsmith Rigoberto González Lavinia Greenlaw Javier Huerta Major Jackson Ada Limón Jeffrey McDaniel Ange Mlinko Travis Nichols Mark Nowak Ed Park Lucia Perillo D.A. Powell Fred Sasaki Don Share Reginald Shepherd Patricia Smith A.E. Stallings Elizabeth Stigler Nick Twemlow Emily Warn Rachel Zucker Subscribe to the RSS feed.  What is RSS? |
Poetry Presents"What use had I for hands":
A Theatrical Interpretation of Five Poems by Dana Levin
Links Hall
3435 N. Sheffield
Friday-Sunday, December 12-14
Free admission
