tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post2388514686898674998..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Felix RandalUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-85233548870491111292012-12-26T10:39:13.119-08:002012-12-26T10:39:13.119-08:00Let it be hereby known by all presents that the re...Let it be hereby known by all presents that the resident was once again put in mind of this great poem by its family relation with another:<br /><br /><a href="http://littlecabinpress.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-blacksmith.html" rel="nofollow">Jonathan Chant: The Blacksmith</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-78120947795301587322012-12-26T07:20:24.276-08:002012-12-26T07:20:24.276-08:00Thanks for pointing me in this direction. Beautifu...Thanks for pointing me in this direction. Beautiful poem, broken rhythm. Jonathan Chanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03647746685252448938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-48604443539807123242011-06-14T14:11:14.313-07:002011-06-14T14:11:14.313-07:00And such a great discussion of this poem ... thank...And such a great discussion of this poem ... thanks for the explication, Tom, and Ed, too, for perspective.<br /><br />Tom, this is the line that just jumps right out at me and screams to me:<br /><br />"Often the poem may mean to say what the poet did not."<br /><br />Beyond that, the last verse and, previously, the meter which accentuates "rhyming" of "contended" "impatient" "mended" and "anointed" all has my head swimming. Masterly.Issa's Untidy Huthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07352841590717991698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-13262528795195380882011-06-14T04:49:50.544-07:002011-06-14T04:49:50.544-07:00"In any case, to go among the poor, to offer ..."In any case, to go among the poor, to offer care, to aid and to assuage, and to speak of these experiences and circumstances from the heart, and to the heart, would certainly not be listed among the enterprises of the celebrity poets of our day.<br /><br />Which is why their works speak to no one and are so soon forgot."<br /><br />Tom, you made my day with this one!Conrad DiDiodatohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18312831623791642286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-16126334927682249772011-06-14T03:25:13.965-07:002011-06-14T03:25:13.965-07:00Tee See ..
I counted syllables onct it was a cou...Tee See ..<br /><br />I counted syllables onct it was a course requirement ... so,<br />I chooze (to scan putting those funny marks over different nemes and memes and stresses and units of)<br />the poems was Ths Wyatt the Elder's "they flee from me that sometimes did me seek"<br /><br />I got a D- for my effort. The professor rote on my paper "You don't know what you're doing, See me after class."<br /><br />me thinks that it is "crazy making" to be forcing/bending "thinking" intp words that make prescribed , formulaic lines, poems...<br /><br /><br />so<br />just maybe, Hopkins AND the 47 originals 'out there' pretended to be crazy-sick-drunkards-buffoons-etc merely in order to maintain their sanity?<br /><br />only problem with pretending is <br />that one<br />tends to become what they pretend to be<br /><br /><br />anyway I think that I have read only one other Hopkins poem but I cant recall it... I tend to want to say<br /><br />"wasn't his Ball Turret Gunner poem ter-rif-ic ? but I know that he didn't write that one ... James Dickey did<br /><br />heck maybe I should start counting syllables:<br /><br />1ne, 2wo, 3hree, 4our shut the door<br />5ive, 6ix, 7even, 8ight kiss me !<br /><br />and<br /><br />as far as being in a crowd or part of one <br /><br />nothing much happens in a crowd .... everEd Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-83223453293708204862011-06-14T00:10:46.692-07:002011-06-14T00:10:46.692-07:00Ed,
I think you've hit on the two great sourc...Ed,<br /><br />I think you've hit on the two great sources of energy in this tremendous poem.<br /><br />Broken rhythm would probably be as good a name as any for the interesting system of prosody Hopkins worked out for himself (pretty much in isolation, where one often finds a surprising freedom once having stepped away from the crowd). His own name for it was sprung rhythm. What it amounts to is an accentual prosody, counting only the stressed syllables, so that a "foot", in the actual practise of this measure, may contain as few as one and as many as four syllables. Hopkins readily acknowledged that he did not invent this system, that in fact it went back to the origins of English poetry (from Piers Plowman to Thomas Wyatt, English poetry had been accentual rather than syllabic in its counting-system). He also thought, and rightly, that such a system also comes much closer than the standard syllable-counted metres to the sound of spoken English (and for that matter also to nursery rhymes & other forms of folk poetry). So it's both "eccentric" and "natural" at the same time.<br /><br />As to the eroticism in this poem, that's undeniable and to us, more or less outright; though this would certainly be an instance of the full meaning of the poem going well beyond the conscious intention stashed therein by the poet. Often the poem may mean to say what the poet did not. Sexual tension has always provided one of the great energies of poetry, sometimes all the more powerful for the intent to subdue it. The cultural straitjacket of Victorianism is perhaps in this case turned into a coat of many colours worn by a poet who suffered for the suppression of his sexuality, felt empathy for the sufferings of others in ways he might not have felt had he been "better-adjusted", experienced the beauty of sexuality in a strange twisted way that was mixed up with the experience of the total beauty of the world, and came out of it depressed, unhappy, ill, a quiet embarrassment to his family and to the Jesuit order in which he had been ordained after undergoing a "conversion" at Oxford -- and a poet of altogether singular quality. The image of the young blacksmith which I've placed beneath the poem perhaps speaks out of this complex, to an age in which we see all these things, if we see anything at all, in what are probably very different ways.<br /><br />I am always grateful for any great poem, at the same time it is impossible to say that the complications and displacements required to create it were/are in every case, or for that matter in any case, a source of fun for the person who wrote it.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-50977035119401012822011-06-13T19:16:59.446-07:002011-06-13T19:16:59.446-07:00neat/interesting 'broken rhythms" (I just...neat/interesting 'broken rhythms" (I just now made that term up ... seems to fit) in this Hopkins poem ..<br /><br />and I just can not ignore the erotic of it...<br /><br />zand I really appreciate your justnow comment<br /><br />the last line of<br /> "(...) and are soon forgot.<br /><br />let s hope soEd Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-68072179503402643082011-06-13T18:56:10.825-07:002011-06-13T18:56:10.825-07:00Hopkins wrote this poem at age 35, in the spring o...Hopkins wrote this poem at age 35, in the spring of 1880, when he was ministering as a priest to the poor in the great soot-blackened industrial city of Liverpool. He was of course not a "famous poet" then, nor, for that matter, at any time in his not very long life (he died at 44). <br /><br />In any case, to go among the poor, to offer care, to aid and to assuage, and to speak of these experiences and circumstances from the heart, and to the heart, would certainly not be listed among the enterprises of the celebrity poets of our day.<br /><br />Which is why their works speak to no one and are so soon forgot.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-9227456120740813212011-06-13T17:20:36.138-07:002011-06-13T17:20:36.138-07:00in 1969
I went into The Prado &
saw all of tho...in 1969<br />I went into The Prado &<br />saw all of those little Goya's<br />hanging on the walls of the stairwell going down<br /><br />I mean to tell you AMAZING<br /><br />this is reporting at its bestest...<br /><br />Goya via etchings<br /><br />Dickens via words<br /><br />... I got tears in my eyesEd Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-49388994454085467562011-06-13T16:55:55.719-07:002011-06-13T16:55:55.719-07:00This really surprised me and raised my frayed mood...This really surprised me and raised my frayed mood. The strong but lattice-like structure, the beautiful sounds, Felix Randal the farrier's "heavenlier heart" and the pictures made my day. "Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?" How does one become able to put that on paper?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-21991918409874063842011-06-13T07:44:49.126-07:002011-06-13T07:44:49.126-07:00Tom,
Wonderful -- not the Hopkins one reads these ...Tom,<br />Wonderful -- not the Hopkins one reads these days or wonders at (its wonders), "my duty all ended," "this seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears," "Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!" --<br /><br />6.13 <br /><br />fog moving across grey whiteness of sky<br />above ridge, shadowed black pine branch<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> that was there, actual fact<br /> is thought of possible<br /><br /> which had been that, to say<br /> “is a thing,” to think <br /><br />grey white of fog against top of ridge,<br />shadowed green pine on tip of sandspitSTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-79328036317360774602011-06-13T04:07:25.859-07:002011-06-13T04:07:25.859-07:00Thanks Conrad. And yes.
To which virtues of his ...Thanks Conrad. And yes. <br /><br />To which virtues of his I have latterly learnt to add compassion also, perhaps latest noticed because latest understood to be an actual possibility in the poem (surely the failing of vision in the reader not the writer in this case, but fortunately we are sometimes permitted to see more from the dark than we thought we knew by light of day...).<br /><br />Where else at any rate would one go in poetry these days to be given to know this:<br /><br />This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-92127880688402717382011-06-13T03:46:24.210-07:002011-06-13T03:46:24.210-07:00Love Hopkins
His difficulty & purity, above a...Love Hopkins<br /><br />His difficulty & purity, above all.Conrad DiDiodatohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18312831623791642286noreply@blogger.com