Product Description
This authoritative edition brings together all of Hopkins's poetry and a generous selection of his prose writings to explore the essence of his work and thinking.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) was one of the most innovative of nineteenth-century poets.During his tragically short life he strove to reconcile his religious and artistic vocations, and this edition demonstrates the range of his interests.It includes all his poetry, from best-known works such as "The Wreck of the Deutschland" and "The Windhover" to translations, foreign language poems, plays, and verse fragments, and the recently discovered poem "Consule Jones". In addition there are excerpts from Hopkins's journals, letters, and spiritual writings.The poems are printed in chronological order to show Hopkins's changing preoccupations, and all the texts have been established from original manuscripts.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things The supplementary documents and the great poems
For most readers including myself what matters in a poet are the great poems. These are the poems most frequently anthologized andmost widely known. These are the ones some of us read over and over again, and even try to memorize. But along with and behind the great poems are the lesser poems. And along with this is the documentation of a life, which in Hopkins case includes many letters. There is too in a critical edition of the poems another benefit for the reader, for in some cases we can see the variants and the transformations the poems undergo before reaching final form.
Again all of these background materials would be nothing without the great poems. In Hopkins poems there is the fresh and wildly original connection with Nature, the miraculous inventiveness of language, a way of seeing and saying like no other poet before. There is too the God - consciousness which pervades Hopkins works and makes him one of the greatest of all the religious poets.
This volume enables us to deepen in our knowledge of one of the English language's greatest poets. ... Read more

Product Description
These Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover editions are popular for their compact size and reasonable price which do not compromise content. Poems: Hopkins contains a full selection of Hopkins's work, including selected verse, prose, and letters, and an index of first lines. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The Inspired Everyman Poets Series
As usual the Gerard Manley Hopkins selection by the editors of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets does not disappoint. This book of Hopkin's poetry, letters and prose is a delightful and well thought out collection of one of England's finest pre-modern transcendent religious writers, with the wisdom to correspond with insight and wit about writing poetry. Another poet to add to my growing collection which now includes Shakespeare, Rilke, and others. Hats off and kudos to Alfred A. Knopf for continuing to produce these gems. Thank you Amazon for providing an essentialy new copy at a discount price!

Great but defective
This is a great little volume.HOWEVER, the copy I received is defective.The cover was bound onto the text upside down.Yuk.It's a pain to have to complain and send it back.

"The dearest freshness deep down things"
Hopkins did not create an enormous body of work, but what he did create was some of the most intensely powerful poetry English Literature has known. They are all here in this volume, poems such as " Thou art indeed, just" " Felix Randal, the Farrier",
" Carrion Comfort" " Binsey Populars" " God's Grandeur". Hopkins whose masterfully original descriptions of the natural world are second to none was one of the great innovators in the history of English verse. His development of the concept of 'sprung rhythm' return to the system of emphasizing the 'stresses' in verse is the key to this.
Hopkins tormented soul , his contention with his own despair are present in his most beautiful and moving poems.

Deep in Genuine, Devoted Faith and Rich Writing
Hopkins is one of those poets hidden from so many because of his subject matter, yet is considered one of the most influential Victorian poets for his use of word combinations, meter and image.

Added to the delicious and poignant poetry is the contemplative nature of his prose and poetry. In it, you'll read about his humility and submission to God, his genuine faith, his desire that his poetry exalt God and not Hopkins himself.

Most his work was published posthumously, as late as 1920 or so, and immediately influenced the likes of T.S. Elliot (AKA, the guy who wrote the poem "Cats" is based on and "Wasteland") and his contemporaries.

While Whitman and Wilde were exalting in themselves, and just after Emerson and Thoreau were helping us see creation, Hopkins demonstrated prowess in pointing readers to see the Creator in the creation.

Atheists won't agree with him, of course, but he says it so well, they will at least go, "Hmm... if I believed, I could see that... yeah, wow, well put." The Catholics will cheer him on, "Atta boy... yep, that guy's a Jesuit!" Not undone are the Protestants who will be so impressed in agreement they'll be happy he was a Christian.

Check out this snippet from "Pied Beauty" "Glory be to God for dappled things--/For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;/For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;/Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings;/Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;/And 'all tra'des, their gear and tackle and trim." Those accents are in the original.

Delicious to say aloud? You should hear the second verse. His others are as tasty.

I fully recommend this book.

Anthony Trendl ... Read more

Product Description
Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of English poetry's most brilliant stylistic innovators, and one of the most distinguished poets of any age. However, during his lifetime he was known not as a poet but as a Jesuit priest, and his faith was essential to his work. His writings combine an intense feeling for nature with an ecstatic awareness of its divine origins, most remarkably expressed in his magnificent and highly original 'sprung rhythm.'

This collection contains not only all of Hopkins’ significant poetry, but also selections from his journals, sermons, and letters, all chosen for their spiritual guidance and insight. Hopkins didn't allow the publication of most of his poems during his lifetime, so his genius was not appreciated until after his death. Now, more than a hundred years later, his words are still a source of inspiration and sheer infectious joy in the radiance of God's creation. ... Read more

Product Description
Closer to Dylan Thomas than Matthew Arnold in his 'creative violence' and insistence on the sound of poetry, Gerard Manley Hopkins was no staid, conventional Victorian. On entering the Society of Jesus at the age of twenty-four, he burnt all his poetry and 'resolved to write no more, as not belonging to my profession, unless by the wishes of my superiors'. The poems, letters and journal entries selected for this edition were written in the following twenty years of his life, and published posthumously in 1918. His verse is wrought from the creative tensions and paradoxes of a poet-priest who wanted to evoke the spiritual essence of nature sensuously, and to communicate this revelation in natural language and speech-rhythms while using condensed, innovative diction and all the skills of poetic artifice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Pied Poetry
Gerard Manley Hopkins is perhaps best known for three poems, all dealing with nature and the reverence due to God for what he has created.Not that one should expect less from a priest who renounced poetry (by burning almost all of his previous writings) when he entered the Society of Jesus and swore that he would never write again, unless his superiors agreed to it.(It is not difficult to see why Thomas Merton identified with Hopkins so much.)Hopkins was not appreciated in his lifetime since his poetry was published posthumously in 1918, and he has fallen by the wayside today, not readily recognized as a top poet.Yet Hopkins holds a unique place between the Victorian and Modern literary worlds that few others hold.The poems in this volume speak to his unique talent for language and rhythm and the sheer joy he took in delighting in the Lord's creation of the world around him.

A great number of Hopkins' poems center around the beauty of nature, with the poet praising God for what he has created.His best-known poems "Pied Beauty", "Spring and Fall", and "God's Grandeur" are testiments to this.Yet Hopkins was not afraid to explore the darker side of his nature, the doubts and fears he experienced even though he was a priest, through a poem like "Carrion Comfort" where the poet can find little to no heavenly solace for his trials and tribulations.Hopkins delighted in creating new words, compound words that compacted lines into neat poetic rhythm and played with the notions those words were meant to represent.He also relied heavily on sound, as evidenced by his reliance on alliteration and stressing words in unusual places.Hopkins' poems are meant to be read and enjoyed aloud.

Penguin Classics' "Poems and Prose" of Gerard Manley Hopkins is an excellent collection of the writer's work.Hopkins' poems are definitely not easy to read or necessarily to understand, as they can often be full of references to things a modern audience may no longer be familiar with.However, there is something downright magical in his use of rhythm and repetition that make his poems come to life and linger in the reader's mind long afterwards.

Thank you Father Gerard
There were two English poets who immediately resonated with me as a teenager and who have kept faith with me in all these years. One is John Donne and the other is Gerard Manley Hopkins. Both first met at 14 at the Singapore American School courtesy of a English Literature class, there was an almost electric connection, which if I had been more self-aware would have told me something about my own sense of aesthetics (lacking) and tastes (more intellectual than sensuous).
In high school, boarding school and college I think Wreck of the Deutschland was my favorite - when I actually figured out how "sprung rhythm" worked I believe I shouted for joy and did a little dance around my room. Only gradually did I come to appreciate the accuracy of the Windhower, depicted in the sound of the poem. The poems dealing directly with religion however remained a closed door.
This lasted until last year, a year of unexpected and devastating loss. And in the worst hours I turned to: John Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and found profound comfort in both, and finally I understood that last, bitter, heartbreaking poem that Father Gerard wrote and learned what it was to "wrestle with (my God) my God" - "Carrion Comfort".

A Reading Of "The Windhover"
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2AUWITQW38YUJ I truly did not know until after selecting this poem that it was Hopkins' own favourite.It's a quite short, unconventional poem, and therefore I have taken the liberty of providing background to it in the video.

a vision of life
I first bought this book in the mid sixties when I was fourteen. It entranced me. Hopkins could gather words on a page that invoked exactly what he was seeing.His crafted poems communicate a vision of nature and life itself. As a prized book, it accompanied me everywhere, but was finally lost on my world travels. Since then I have bought (and passedto others) several more copies.

This volume also contains a selection of Hopkins' prose, which logs the poet's personal development, his struggles and triumphs, his keen observation, and his warmth and humour.

What Hopkins communicates is a healthy, soul-enhacing vision of life--in contrast to his older contemporary, Nietzsche, who instead left to us posturing declamations, which have nourished fascists and other self-assertors from then till now.

So, for a contrasting and good direction in life, one which is deeply humane, I recommend this book--with its intense revelation of the freshness deep down in things.

True Poet
There's something to be said for a Poet published entirely posthumously who was still ahead of his time at the time of publication. Hopkins sailed with Modern winds in Victorian seas, all the while remaining decidedly Christian and exquisitely formal. A hero for those of us who still believe that Christianity offers the only real reason to respond to experience with words. Only in a world spoken into existence could such a thing as poetry (verbal creation) unite so many for so long. Hopkins interacts with the fibers of creation and uses the English language for what it was intended, even adapts it to further fulfill his calling. The glory of God flames out from every hyphen in every kenning in every Curtal-Sonnet on every page of this book. ... Read more

Product Description
Drawing from the poetry and journal of Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is considered a major 19th century English poet, editor Francis X. McAloon, S.J. draws us into Hopkins' intense joy in and sacramental view of nature as a manifestation of the beauty of the divine in the natural world.

Includes a short introduction to Hopkins' life and work, questions to draw the reader into Hopkins' spiritual world, journaling suggestions and daily prayers. This 40-day journey is an invitation to personal meditation and/or group discussion. An inspiring journey to take at any time, especially through the seasons of Advent and Lent. ... Read more

Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Useless!
This kindle edition is a misunderstanding. Small matter that there is no table of contents to navigate it. But the text has no formating! The poems, not divided into verses, run like prose! Chaos, and a waste of time. I guess you get what you pay for, but still.. ... Read more

Product Description
Formatted for the Kindle. Linked Contents and footnotes.

CONTENTS
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
EARLY POEMS
POEMS 1876-1889
UNFINISHED POEMS & FRAGMENTS
EDITOR'S PREFACE
NOTES ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

??? on Kindle 3
Many lines on my Kindle 3 have rectangular boxes containing questions marks prepended. So "The Wreck of the Deutschland" looks something like

???????????????Thou mastering me
??????????God! giver of breath and bread;
?????World's strand, sway of the sea;
??????????Lord of living and dead;
???Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
???And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
?????Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.

There are some poems where this doesn't happen at all, and others where it regularly occurs. I think the ?s represent spaces for formatting indentations. It would be nice if there were a way to either filter the ?s out or convert them to spaces. Given a relatively low price, and given that this seems to be a comprehensive collection of Hopkins' poetry, 3 stars seems a fair rating.

doesn't work well on Kindle, especially Kindle 2
On my Kindle, I don't know how to get beyond the introduction and to the poems.I do next page after next page and just get introduction.Pressing the joy stick right does nothing.There is a brief table of contents at the beginning, but Early Poems and Poems are not selectable.Of course, I can go to a high-numbered location, but I have no sensible way to choose the number.In addition, since the introduction was formatted for the Kindle DX, the lines run over on the Kindle 2.

Of course if you know Hopkins, you can do a search on a word or two.The only word I knew to search for was "dappled".This led me to the poem I was looking for, and I enjoyed it and the next few poems.The poems fit on the page quite well.

On reconsideration, I wanted to change my rating from one to three stars, but Amazon wouldn't let me.

Glory be to God for dappled things--
Gardner and MacKenzie have compiled a fine collection of Hopkins' juvenalia, mature work, and uncollected fragments/translations.

I wish that I knew what to say to compel readers unfamiliar with his work to buy this or another collection. The Terrible Sonnets are among the most moving treatment of spiritual anguish in the English language. If you are doubting, take the time to look "Carrion Comfort" up on the web-- the poems are available at Bartleby.com. This book is one of my constant poetic companions.

For readers already familiar with the more famous pieces, it is a treat to see his younger work and translations.Reading the book as a whole gives a picture of a mind in motion. What led him to this point?

"NO worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?"

Read it, read it, read it.

One of the truly great poets
This review does not relate to the quality and character of the Oxford Complete Poems. It rather relates to Hopkins unique greatness as a poet which I will try to say a few words about.
Hopkins created his own style of verse, his own vocabulary for perceiving the world, his own special rhythm and language in poetry.
He is not the most easy poet to understand, and I will admit that his longer poems lose me.
When I consider his work I relate primarily to five, six , seven poems which seem to me extraordinary. " The world is charged with the Grandeur of God"and " Thou art indeed just, Lord" and "Felix Randall the Farrier, Is he dead then?' are to me the most memorable. They contain a power and beauty, a tremendous sense of identification with and understanding of the suffering in life, a kind of unique and intimate perception of the details of the natural world.
Hopkins the tormented priest wrote to my mind some of the most memorable and beautiful lines in the English language. Consider the closing of ' Thou art Indeed Just Lord""Birds build but not I build/ but break Times wounds And never breed one work that wakes Thou O My Lord of Life Send my roots Rain."

All creatures as of infinite value and infinitely precious.
THE POEMS OF GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS.Fourth Edition based on theFirst Edition of 1918 and enlarged to incorporate all known poems andfragments.Edited by W. H. Gardner and N. H. Mackenzie.362 pp. Oxford and New York : Oxford University Press, 1970.ISBN 0-19-281094-4 (pbk.)

For anyone who is interested in Hopkins, and everyone should be, this is the standard and authoritative edition.It gives us the onlycomplete and accurate text which for the first time puts the poems in their true chronological order.

The poems have been arranged in four sections : Early Poems (1860-1875?); Poems (1876-1879); Unfinished Poems, Fragments, Light Verse, &c. (1862-89); Translations, Latin and Welsh Poems, &c. (1862-67). The book contains a useful and informative Introduction and Foreword,and is rounded out with very full Notes, a series of Appendices, and Indexes of titles and first lines.It is also beautifully printed on excellent paper, stitched, and bound in a sturdy glossy wrapper.

Hopkins had a unique sensibility, and brought something very special and of great value into English poetry.He seems to have had theability to enter into the intelligence and feelings and spirit of all life forms, whether animal or plant or even landscape, to resonate with the indwelling divinity within them, and to somehow magically bring the miracle of their vibrant being over into his poems.

Hopkins is in fact a striking example of the fully human sensibility as described in the works of Heidegger and the great thinkers of the East, and exemplifies a quality of sensibility which most of us seem somehowto have lost.We skate dully and blindly over the surface of things,but Hopkins plunges into the depths of being and carries us along with him.In other words, he puts us back in touch with reality, with what life is really about.Hence his enormous value and importance.

In a complete collection such as this, there are bound to be manypoems that fall short of greatness.For the newcomer to Hopkins, onesuggested approach might be to first read some of his greatest poems, poems such as 'God's Grandeur,' 'Spring,' 'The Windhover,' 'PiedBeauty,' 'The Caged Skylark,' 'Binsey Poplars,' 'As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame.'

There are many beauties to enjoy in Hopkins - his unique use oflanguage, his control of sound and rhythm, his amazing images and metaphors - but for me the most beautiful thing of all is the newshe brings, news of a universe in which all things are of infinite value and infinitely precious, and in which no creature is of any less value than another because all are indwelt by divinity:

"Each mortal thing does one thing and the same : / Deals out that being indoors each one dwells ; / Selves, goes itself ; _myself_it speaks and spells, / Crying _What I do is me : for that I came_"(p.90).

Hopkins makes us acutely aware of our loss, and our crime.His poems map out a path back to a saner, more balanced, and more wholesome and intelligent way of dwelling on the earth, dwelling lightly upon itwith all other creatures and as its guardian, not its ravager.

"O if we but knew what we do / When we delve or hew - / Hack and rack the growing green! / ... After-comers cannot guess the beauty been...' (pp.78-9).

Hopkins, I think, would have been very much in agreement with Heidegger who tells us that the earth must once again become a _Spielraum_ , a space of great beauty in which to play, and one in whichall creatures, instead of being treated as mere objects, are allowedto do what they came here to do, to develop the full potential of their natures and fulfill themselves as manifestations of divinity.His poems are unforgettable, and one envies those who may be coming to them for the first time. ... Read more

Product Description
Gerard Manley Hopkins initially planned to become a poet-artist. For five years he trained his eye, learned about contemporary art and architecture, and made friends in the Pre-Raphaelite circle. In her fascinating and beautifully illustrated book, Catherine Phillips, whose knowledge of Hopkins's poems is second to none, uses letters, new archival material, and contemporary publications to reconstruct the visual world Hopkins knew between 1862 and 1889, and especially in the 1860s, with its illustrated journals, art exhibitions, Gothic architecture, photographic shows, and changing art criticism.

Phillips identifies three artistic contexts for the Hopkins's life: his childhood circle of artistic relatives who were important in shaping his early vision; his friends at university and the criticism he absorbed while there that inflected his view as a young man; and the mature religious beliefs which came to govern his understanding of a visual world interconnected with an eternal one.

With chapters devoted to Hopkins own drawings, and to visual theories of the time, Phillips is able to suggests fresh links between this visual world and the startling originality of Hopkins's mature writing that will impact radically on our understanding of Hopkins's practice as a poet. ... Read more

Product Description
Norman MacKenzie accurately described the writings of the poet Hopkins in topographic terms as "Hopkins Country." This concept has profound implications for anyone who is trying to understand the poems which present every reader with challenges of reference to local and international events, autobiography, religious belief, trades, agriculture, philosophy, theology, aesthetics, culture-the actual list is much longer. Add to this the matter of how the poems sound: meter, rhythm, Anglo-Saxon alliteration and primordial diction, tempo, dynamics. This Hopkins Country is rich and varied. To make one's way through it one needs a guide. MacKenzie is that guide, almost as Vergil was Dante's guide through three levels of another country (and Dante made it up!).
The best guide in any country is a well-worn footsoldier who has weathered and worked the terrain, not a temp like the rest of us who parachute in, or hover above a lovely spot or bird in flight and pontificate on this or that view or inscape, and then like a hummingbird or bee, fly off to another country. Reading Hopkins is work, as MacKenzie reported of his encounter in 1945 with the poet: "Hopkins was invitingly difficult, obviously worth exploring." At that point MacKenzie started an apprenticeship on the ground, in the field, that imperceptibly changed to lifetime mastery. For 57 years Norman MacKenzie was the senior tenant of that country. Paradoxically, he lived longer with Hopkins than Hopkins lived with himself. Hopkins died before he was 45. And when in 2004, just short of reaching the age of 89, MacKenzie died, he was bringing his precious Reader's Guide into the new century. His daughter, Catherine Phillips, as worthy a Hopkins scholar and editor as she is a daughter, with filial discretion has completed the revision, leaving most of the text as it was-most of us felt it could have been reprinted as it was-but taking note of scholarship and editing that have happened since 1981. The voice is still unmistakably that of Norman MacKenzie.

What makes MacKenzie's book different? Precisely that lifetime of familiarity with the Country that the rest of us really just plan on visiting. For the armchair traveler, a map and descriptions of anywhere are likely to be enough. But not for an explorer. To try to read Hopkins the way one reads a map is to distort the Hopkins Country, like the world, to flatness. The true world is configured in infinitely varied ways. So too the Hopkins Country. Norman MacKenzie put it this way in the Preface to the 1981 edition: to the reader "on foot, healthily determined to follow the poet's trail, [existing specialized studies] seldom supply the mile-by-mile direction he needs. It is for him that A Reader's Guide to Gerard Manley Hopkins is intended, designed . . . to accompany the author through the poems in more or less chronological sequence. The territory, too rugged for the taste of his own contemporaries, is on that account all the more inviting to us today."
Generations of students and instructors have treasured their rare copies of the 1981 edition, as they were unable to share the compendium of that Country as a gift to friends. Small as the book seems (277 pages), it is an encyclopedia of knowledge. There is a brief chronology of the life and interests of Hopkins, followed by 230 pages of guidance through the poems in the form of facts about the composition, manuscript variations, interpretations, paraphrases, and critical disagreements. A recently discovered playful poem is printed with commentary. ... Read more

Product Description
This 1978 critical study of the English Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins provides original readings of the principal poems. It also gives full explanations of such terms as 'sprung rhythm' and 'inscape', and attempts to gauge the effect on Hopkins of the medieval schoolman John Duns Scotus. There have traditionally been two critical theories about Hopkins' work: that it was the result of a conflict between his priestly and his poetic vocations; or that the poetry was given birth and shaped by his training for the priesthood. John Robinson appraises both these theories fairly and sensitively, and puts forward his own view of the poet's development - that in pursuit of his ideals, Hopkins lived the whole of his life 'in extremity' and that the consequences of this are evident in his poetry, in his joy and in his anguish. ... Read more

Product Description
This authoritative edition brings together all of Hopkins's poetry and a generous selection of his prose writings to explore the essence of his work and thinking. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) was one of the most innovative of nineteenth-century poets.During his tragically short life he strove to reconcile his religious and artistic vocations, and this edition demonstrates the range of his interests.It includes all his poetry, from best-known works such as "The Wreck of the Deutschland" and "The Windhover" to translations, foreign language poems, plays, and verse fragments, and the recently discovered poem "Consule Jones". In addition there are excerpts from Hopkins's journals, letters, and spiritual writings.The poems are printed in chronological order to show Hopkins's changing preoccupations, and all the texts have been established from original manuscripts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Lights a lovely mile
Gerard Manley Hopkins was one of the greatest poets ever. The way he uses language was simply sui generis:

Where whatever's prized and passes of us, everything that's fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and swiftly away with, done away with, undone...

The world is charged with the grandeur of God
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil...

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there...

His language is lush and musical, lyrical and biting all at once. There are only a few who have handled the English language with the ability of Hopkins.

This collection of his is an excellent one, to be kept by your bedside, and, when the world is too much, to be savored.

one of the greats
I read some of G.M. Hopkins in high school.These poems have a certain transcendental quality to them.If you enjoy "going back to nature" then read these selections.timeless writing by a genius.

A Handy Hopkins
The only other edition of Hopkins I had was falling apart.Oxford's edition, at this point, seems sturdy.The introduction was interesting without being tedious.The notes are good.The paper was thick enough to prevent type shadows from the opposite page.I can't remember feeling the pinch when I paid for it.There is not much to rave about except the sturdy edition of the poems of Hopkins, and all literate people should have a copy on his or her bookshelf.

Ah! Bright Wings
A great many people would like to read poetry, even recite some, but don't know where to start. Start here. Why? Hopkins is both easy to read and a unique voice. His "sprung rythm" results in a beat running all through the poem that has something in common with rock music and something else in common with beat poetry and something in common with rap. In short, it's poetry to be read out loud, exulting in the words and the wordplay.

Hopkins is too good to be hidden away in dusty tomes for English majors to drag out once in their careers. One of the early editors of the Oxford collection was Charles Williams, a fellow Inkling and friend of C.S. Lewis. His goal was to make Hopkins available to more readers, and later editors seem to have echoed this goal.

Almost everyone who reads him gets captivated by a favorite poem. Mine is "God's Grandeur", which begins: "The world is charged with the grandeur of God; it will fan out like shining from shook foil." I don't think "fan" is the right word here; I don't have the book handy and I'm reciting from memory. But that's my point; these are poems that bring back the joy of quoting a few lines here and there. Another great poem is "The Kingfisher". Then there is "The Binsey Poplars".

Another reason to dip into Hopkins is that he is so post-modern. He wrestled with the dark night of the soul, the topic of practically all contemporary alt-rock. His own journey led him to join a monastery and give up writing poetry, after which he was deeply sad. Wisely, his insightful director allowed and encouraged him to return to his calling, which in following he produced these amazing poems. This Oxford opens the door to what for many will be a new and delightful world, and if anyone can re-enchant poetry for our generation, it's Hopkins.

A poetic rhapsody that gathers all the religious joys and torments of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
The poet-priest Gerard Manly Hopkins was imbued with the gift of natural poetic expression, and the tragedy of his life was that he saw it as something other than the God-given gift that it truly was. But due to almost fanatic scrupulousness, he relegated his work to the camp of literary narcissism, that-if read by a public at large-it would in no way, shape or form, enhance or open their perception to the engulfing gloriousness of faith and God and the Church. Hopkins, who struggled to curtail his output due to a clash of conscience, wanted to use his poetry as a catalyst for conversions. But even in the epicenter of creativity when his greatest works were produced, he was always disheartened with an inner turmoil that gnawed at him and made him feel that his poetry was not in line with his religious calling. But atop that and probably more dispiriting was his heavy walk to conversion into the Catholic Church-which unmasked an intense yearning for a more esoteric depth and its personal aftereffects-most notibly, his evolving solemnity which distanced him from his friends and family, ultimately leaving his mother to pen him a letter of protest regarding his conversion whereby she wrote, 'Gerard, my darling boy, are you indeed gone from me?'

St. John of the Cross wrote the Dark Night of the Soul, and after reading various poems-a reader will definitely concur that Manley privately lived that experience to its fullest, most evident in his poem 'No Worst' when he writes in the first four stanzas:

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?

A true expression of the dark night. The palpability of the soul being redone is so genuinely conveyed, one can almost feel the mental wounds that are in exact conformity with Christ Jesus who was crucified before us. But with Manley's poetry, it is not all doom and gloom, for there are expressions of intense natural beauty and sincere love of the Divine, as noted with 'Love me as I love thee':

Love me as I love thee. O double sweet!
But if though hate me who love thee, albeit
Even thus I have the better of thee:
Thou canst not hate so much as I do love thee.

The potry of Gerard Manley Hopkins is evocative of so many emotions: faith (Easter Communion), God (Thee, God, I come from), Mary (The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe), God through nature (Heaven-Haven: A nun takes the veil), the saints (St Thecla), death (O Death, Death). Each of the bracketed poems is indicative of a truth about us as a people and what we are striving and hoping for, with all our flaws, stains and imperfections. Poetry can speak volumes, and Hopkins illustrates the good as well as the bad of the Church. He airs it out, and by so doing, allows an element of reality to come through for the rest of us. ... Read more

Product Description
An insightful and inspirational biography of the heroic and spiritual poet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) may well have been the most original and innovative poet writing in the English language during the nineteenth century. Yet his story of personal struggle, doubt, intense introspection, and inward heroism has never been told fully. As a Jesuit priest, Hopkins’s descent into loneliness and despair and his subsequent recovery are a remarkable and inspiring spiritual journey that will speak to many readers, regardless of their faith or philosophies.

Paul Mariani, an award-winning poet himself and author of a number of biographies of literary figures, brilliantly integrates Hopkins’s spiritual life and his literary life to create a rich and compelling portrait of a man whose work and life continue to speak to readers a century after his death. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

I'll read it again.
I bought this text because Paul Mariani wrote it. I've read Hopkins poetry for years and enjoyed what I could understand. Mariani showed me what I didn't understand and he placed each poem in its historical, biographical context. That helped. I'll read the book again. The book does take some work but it's worth the effort.

Poetry Begetting Poetry
It has been some time now since I read Mariani's beautiful biography of Hopkins.So what remains in me is the emotion of the book.Wading into the first chapter, I remember how strange the style of writing felt to me.Mariani swung from staccato journalese in one chapter to flowing, florid poetical syntax the next.How strange, how different - now I wouldn't have it any other way.Later, I began having issues with Mariani the poet competing with Hopkins himself.I got over that in a hurry, I now wish all books were written so beautifully.

Regarding Hopkins the man.I find so much beauty in him, so much transcendence, as well as a deliciously deep and flawed human being.The revelations about Hopkins' difficulties and perfectionism regarding his poetry; his having to gain the approval of the Jesuit censors and believing he should (and would) forego acclaim in his lifetime.What joy in pain.

Reading of Hopkins' only love affair with his best friend was heart wrenching.So tragic, so lovely. Both the man and this book.The measure of all books in my opinion: I couldn't put it down.And in the end, I rued the fact that it was over (How could I ever find another book I loved as much?)and as all biographies end, this beautiful man, whom Mariani had helped me know and love, had died.I closed the cover after some time, tears flowing, a wretched smile on my face.I tend to believe that this will be the only book that I re-read in this lifetime.A Masterpiece!

Gerard Manly Hopkins Life
The book appeared to be fine, however the first eight (8) pages were missing. Question? a one time miss or a printing sequence miss. Have not reordered until verified. Sorry.

Not worth the effort
I quit reading after about 30 pages. It was almost all quotations and facts from Hopkins's letters, with the author adding his tone of extreme adulation for all things Catholic.It started with Hopkins in his late teens, telling nothing of his childhood or setting him in English life of the time.It dealt with his agonizing conversion to Catholocism without ever identifying the agony - spiritual, doctrinal, emotional?About then I figured I could read the letters as well as the author could and gave up and went in search of a biography rather than a hagiography.

Hagiography or Biography?
Professor Paul Mariani is likely our finest, living American biographer of poets.He is also one of our best, close readers of Hopkins' admittedly difficult verse.But with his newest biography on the Victorian priest/poet Mariani falls short, succumbing in many instances to hagiography not biography.One of the great ommisions is Mariani's failure to address Hopkins' sexuality.All of the major biographers before him, Kitchen, Martin and White, have addressed the poet's homosexuality and the homoeroticism of his verse.Mariani chooses to avoid the issue completely.Not that he is shy to address sexuality because he addresses it in all his other biographies on Williams, Lowell, Berryman and of course, Crane, also a homosexual man.I think perhaps Mariani has placed his beloved Hopkins too high on a pedestal.He should have brought him down to earth.He feels more comfortable to interpret the terrible sonnets as an expression of the mystical dark night.However, they appear to be the cries of a man under great mental strain.Not for a moment do I believe that Hopkins felt God's absence in his life; He was as real and present as Hopkins' Irish students and colleagues.No, what Hopkins suffered from was a lifetime of leading a double life, a lifetime of hiding his true nature.It is why he wrote to his friend Bridges that he saw himself in the verse of Walt Whitmen.Two quite different poets, both innovative, but Hopkins saw his own sexual nature in Whitman, who did not camouflage his homosexuality.I wish Mariani had taken this issue by the horns, but he chose not to.He surely has his reasons.He may simply revere the poet too much.But there is nothing shameful about Hopkins' sexual nature.And by all accounts he was a good, saintly man who surely kept his vow of chastity to the very end.Perhaps Mariani felt it proper to ignore the poet's homosexuality because his son is a Jesuit, and he now is a professor at a Jesuit college, but his avoidance of the issue does, in my opinion, compromise his otherwise superb biography of one of our greatest poets.Regardless of my one reservation, I recommend most highly to my friends Mariani's book:it has the right to stand next to Kitchen, Martin, White, and of course, one of the earliest biographers, Lahey. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

This work will deepen your understanding of Hopkins' poetry
This is a very good study of the poetry of Hopkins. It considers his life, character and poetry, his religious belief, his techniques and poetic language, his major poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland",his spring poems of 1877, Creation Destruction and Religious Poems, 1877-79 , People and Places Poems 1879-1882 The Terrible Sonnets,Four Late Poems, .
Here are Watson's concluding lines on my favorite Hopkins' poem "Thou Art Indeed Just". "This is one of the most affecting of Hopkins' later poems.Itis a beautifully- controlled and very moving expression of the sense of failure ,and it is a very good example of the way in which Hopkins religious beliefs deepened and gave significance to his poetry. This sonnet could have been just a grumble about failure and sterility, or a bitter poem about those who seemed happier,more careless and more successful from himself. But the passage from Jeremiah, and the allusions to his own dedication and to God the righteous judge, raise the poem and give it the status of a theological problem as well as a private dilemna. The word which occurs twice in line 3 is the word ' why':it is a cry which has been made by many suffering servants from Jeremiah until now, a cry which is a question from a fallen world. And if Hopkins later poems can be said to have anything in the way of a meaning which underpins them. It can be seen to be an acute awareness of his own others' unhappiness.He rescues moments, attitudes, pictures, places from this( a boy bugler taking communion,a man ploughing, a stream tumbling over rocks), but the note steadily deepens as Hopkins becomes more and more aware of the unhappiness of the world (or the transience of happiness)in his own experience".
... Read more

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A biography of Gerald Manley Hopkins that explores the poets life and work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The greatness of Hopkins
The greatness of Hopkins is in part in his developing a language of his own, a poetic technique of his own of extraordinary poetic intensity and beauty. The alliteration of sprung rhythmand his strong forceful line are one element in this. But also there is Hopkins religious vision "This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears." It is also in the pathos of his own life situation, "Birds build, but not I and never breed one work that wakes" and his intense connection with and pleading to God, " Thou O My Lord of Life, Send my roots rain." But it is too an intense power of sensual apprehension of the natural world as in the poem "Pied Beauty"
"Glory be to God for dappled things-For skies of couple- colour as a brinded cow;For rose- moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh- firecoal chesnut -falls; finsches wings; Landscape plotted and pieced- fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things,counter, original spare, strange, Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how)With swift, slow, sweet , sour adazzle, dim; He fathers- forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him."

The greatness of Hopkins is in a way of seeing feeling hearing God's world and its suffering that moves us to suddenly perceive it more deeply and more intensely. ... Read more

Product Description
Probably no English poet of the 19th century is today so widely read or greatly loved as Gerard Manley Hopkins. Yet in his lifetime he was almost entirely unpublished, and only a handful of his close friends knew that he wrote poetry at all. On his death, many of Hopkins' poems, together with most of his other papers, were burned by his fellow Jesuits who did not realize what they had in their midst; and they were to guard closely what remained, until now. Robert Bernard Martin is the first biographer to have had unrestricted access to Hopkins' surviving papers. The result is as complete a biography of this astonishingly immediate poet as we are ever likely to achieve. It is also, in places, revelatory. Martin shows that the homosexuality many have found latent in Hopkins' poetry blossomed in his undergraduate love for a flamboyant friend Digby Dolben. He also shows how, though Hopkins' chaotic psyche needed the structure which life as a Jesuit gave him, the severity of its discipline inevitably constricted his creative faculty, at times almost to the point of strangulation.Despite the obscurity of Hopkins' life, his surviving work marks him as a central figure in English literature. ... Read more

Product Description
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) is now recognized as a major poet of striking originality and is widely admired for his particularly vivid expression of feeling. This selection, chosen from the award-winning Oxford Authors critical edition, includes most of the larger fragments and all of his major English poems, such as "The Blessed Virgin," "No Worst," "The Windhover," "Pied Beauty" and "The Wreck of the Deutschland." The poems are illuminated further by extensive Notes and a useful Introduction to Hopkins's life and poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

the greatest poetry ever written
Gerard Manley Hopkins is the greatest English poet to ever put pen to paper, bar none. Yes, even better than Shakespeare. Every student of English lit should read Hopkins. Hopkins writes from a profound love and awe of God and the beauty of His creations, but also from a deep despair resulting from chronic depression. His mastery of classical English combined with his magic use of sounds and word inventions is sheer genius. Read him. ... Read more

Product Description
This work contains all the important poetic works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, including: "The Wreck of the Deutschland", "God's Grandeur", "The Windhover", "Pied Beauty", "Binsey Poplars" and "Felix Randall". The sonnets all give voice to the poet's personality, spirituality and vision. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Gerard Manley Hopkins
This fellow is a masterful, beautiful writer. And if you already know him, this is an excellent, inexpensive review. ... Read more

Product Description
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christian mystical poet, is beloved for his use of fresh language and startling metaphors to describe the world around him. Although his verse is lovely, beneath the surface lies a searching soul, wrestling with and yearning for God. Hopkins writes from a Christian background, and yet his themes speak to people of all faiths who seek a deeper understanding of the presence of God in all of life.

This beautiful sampling of Hopkins's poetry offers a glimpse into his unique spiritual vision that continues to inspire readers throughout the world. The poems unite his two devotions, presenting mystical images of Christ in the natural world, which serve as a window through which you might also begin to see the Divine Presence in the world around you. ... Read more

Product Description
The arresting poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins arises from philosophical engagement with the Trinity, the Incarnation, and other mysteries of Christian revelation. No previous study has explored his poetry in the light of his philosophical theology. Hopkins’s thoughts on justice and language challenge today’s inhuman literary theories.

With explications of more than twenty-nine of Hopkins’s intricate poems and difficult prose, this study traces Hopkins’s engagement with his age. New, philosophically rigorous definitions of Hopkins’s key poetic terms—“inscape” and “instress”—detail exactly how he discovered the possibility of multiple true concepts of things, each grounded in reality but demanding the participation of the moral will. Doubt of the possibility of historical truth drove many Victorians to scientism or vague religious sentimentalism. Hopkins asserted that humans physically can and morally must learn truth. Haunted by a sense that experience is incommunicably singular, and aware that culture and consciousness shape history, he found support in the personalist religious epistemology of John Henry Newman. On it Hopkins formed his poetics, later enriched by John Duns Scotus’s communitarian theory of justice in language. Scotus deeply influenced Hopkins’s idea of poetry, coloring not only his arguments and images but the metrical and verbal music of his style.

Lovers of Hopkins’s poetry will find a deeper understanding of his music; philosophers will find an epistemology and aesthetics worthy of respect. Students of literature will find a challenging theory of the relationship between linguistic structures and the world of experience. In today’s intellectual environment, which treats the notion of truth as a cynical tool of politics, and deception as inherent in language, Hopkins’s luminous vision of sacrificial love and community at the heart of poetry offers a refreshing antidote to the dry suspicions of academic literary theory. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Extremely Helpful
I found this to be one of the most helpful works on Hopkins that I have read.On all occasions Ward shows a respect and attention to the poet that is quite refreshing.Her unique insistence on understanding the serious importance of his intellectual formation (which included close study of Ruskin, Newman, Scotus, and Catholic sacramental theology), makes a powerful case for reconsidering the assumptions of both excesively pious critics who see in Hopkins a mystic who intuited great spiritual truths without employing his immense intellectual gifts to sort out the theological facts, and of postmodern writers who correlatively assume that Hopkins actually had a weak and degenerate mind, and that his obvious poetic gifts had nothing to do with the quality or consistency of the superstitions that he communicated using those gifts.

Ward makes her case in each chapter by communicating concisely and interestingly the key thoughts of those intellectual figures and movements that strongly influenced Hopkins, and then by very persuasively revealing the real influence of those thinkers by using their thoughts in the exposition of many of his major poems.My academic training is in philosophy, and I was especially impressed with how well the focus of the book on communicating philosophical theology in order to understand Hopkins does not prevent a serious presentation of the ideas of the thinkers in question--the treatment of Scotus, for example, reveals that Dr. Ward has read much more broadly in the writings of the difficult 13th century friar than is normal for a literary critic trying to understand what Hopkins means by the terms "instress" and "inscape," and what he means when he refers them to Scotus's philosophy.

Many have noticed the influence that poets like Shakespeare and Milton have exerted on Hopkins's imagery and sound, but this book fills a gaping hole in Hopkins scholarship by seriously exploring the tremendous influence that Hopkins's favorite philosophers, theologians, and critics had on the thought that undergirds that use of imagery and sound.Highly recommended. ... Read more