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In this book, critic James Olney explores the work of three seemingly disparate precursors of modernism - Whitman, Dickinson and Hopkins - and establishes a set of criteria by which any reader might judge and better appreciate a poem. Considering the language of the poets' times, their unique ways with language, and what he calls the "nearly historical language" of poetry, Olney arrives at three properties that form a kind of common ground in poetry, regardless of the cultural context of the era in which a poem is written. These properties are a heightened rhythmisation of language, an elevated figurativity of language, and a highly personal, distinctive eccentricity that shapes both the poetic vision and the technical means used to express it. In three chapters, each focusing on one of these properties, Olney shows how three poets shaped these elements in distinctive ways. "Dickinsonian" verse, he notes, displays a metrical regularity reminiscent of hymns. It is also a thoroughly metaphorical poetry that works through figures of similarity and resemblance, and it reveals an unmistakable economy and a "darting quicksilver" elusiveness.Whitman's highly rhythmic, but entirely nonmetrical, poetry is dominated by figures of correlation and connection. His verse, pervaded by an insatiate desire to annex the human world and universe to himself, has a sense of being never-ending. Hopkins's poems are markedly rhythmic and even metrical, but not according to any traditional or inherited system of metrics. Figuratively mixed, they are highly wrought poems that observe the strictest formalities in order to subjugate unruly and explosive emotions. Throughout his discussions, Olney quotes extensively from the poetry of all three figures and also conveys much about the effect of their personal lives on their work. In plain terms that neither obfuscate nor overshadow his subjects, Olney helps us to understand better the ways in which poets defamiliarise our world and make us see it anew. ... Read more

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A bold exploration in fiction of the years Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of England's foremost Victorian poets, spent in Ireland - of his torments, his ecstasies, his fears, and his loves. The last sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins, fraught as they are with despair, have long intrigued readers and critics alike. In this fascinating and challenging novella, we discover that the poet's inner agony is the result of his homosexual inclinations, which he was compelled to hide from his fellow Jesuits. This is the story of a man who loves greatly, but because of the life he has chosen, he must always dissemble. ... Read more

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Gerard Manley Hopkins: Hidden Desires
Robert Waldron's novella, The Secret Dublin Diary of Gerard Manley Hopkins, paints a brilliant and haunting portrait of a complicated man who is caught in the chasm bridging the spiritual and the sensual.

Hopkins grew up in a family that was comfortable by today's standards.He was very bright, thin and small of stature.He disliked games and did not measure up to the Victorian ideal of manliness.Instead, he loved to sketch, write poetry and was drawn to nature.He was fascinated by beauty and was especially aware of male beauty. He was considered odd, felt that he never quite fit in, yet was able to gain acceptance from his peers who recognized his innate goodness and gentle kindness.Hopkins studied at and graduated from Oxford.While there he continued writing verse.At times he felt attractions to male friends, which he both sentimentalized and spiritualized.He was attracted to his friend Robert Bridges yet never dared give voice to this feeling.Later he met Bridges' cousin, the precocious seventeen-year-old Digby Mackworth Dolben and fell head over heels in love with him.This friendship was short-lived because Dolben drowned while teaching a friend's son how to swim.Hopkins was haunted by this loss for the rest of his days.

While at Oxford he turned from the Anglicanism of his family and converted to Roman Catholicism.John Henry Newman received him into the Church.His conversion was a blow to his family and led to a temporary estrangement from them.Hopkins believed that he was risking his very soul unless he did convert.Eventually after more consultations with Newman, Hopkins joined the Society of Jesus, continued his studies and was ordained as a Jesuit priest.Prior to entering the Society of Jesus, Hopkins destroyed all of his poetry because he felt that time spent writing poetry was time stolen from his vocation. Fortunately he had sent copies of his poems to his friend Bridges, who eventually published them twelve years after Hopkins' death.

The Jesuits are an international teaching order.Hopkins taught in one of their British seminaries, ministered to the poor in both Glasgow and Liverpool and was eventually called to teach Greek at University College in Dublin.He answered the call to Dublin out of obedience to his Jesuit superiors and in so doing, suffered the additional loss of being exiled from family, friends and homeland.Ultimately, he renounced his very humanity to answer God's call as he heard it.

Waldron uses the literary device of the diary entry to give us glimpses into Hopkins' life during the time he spent stationed in Ireland.The novella opens with Hopkins describing his storm-tossed crossing to Dublin. When he arrives at the college Brother John Conroy whom he calls a "godsend friend" warmly greets him.Conroy is handsome and kind and Hopkins is immediately drawn to him.Conroy helps him with his bags and shows him around the university.During a walk with John a few days later, John offers advice on how Hopkins can prepare for the interview all new teachers must have with the head of the university, Father Darlington.He suggests that Gerard may want to prepare a short explanation of his educational philosophy, knowing full well that Father Darlington will inquire about it.

An earlier entry described how lonely Hopkins is and how depressed he feels being away from family, friends and England.Dublin's rainy weather piles on to his misery.Finally after almost a week of gloomy days, the clouds part, the sun emerges and Hopkins goes for a walk in the nearby Saint Stephen's Green.He gazes around taking in everything when he spots a student "lying naked to the waist in the sun-drenched grass."Rather than reprimanding the student for his lack of modesty, Hopkins drinks in the view and longs to reach out and touch the young man.Hopkins' look and desire to touch reveal his desperate longing for touch and the human connection.Several later diary entries relate how Hopkins feels "weary of being touch poor."At this point though, Hopkins catches himself, realizes that he is forgetting"custodia occulorum" or custody of the eyes and is immediately overwhelmed by guilt. I remember this admonition from an earlier time in my own life.One was expected to always keep one's gaze cast downward, to never stare at another person lest one fall into temptation.How thoroughly silly was this practice and nearly impossible, especially for such a visual person as Hopkins.

Hopkins develops a close friendship with Brother John, which brings joy to his barren existence and helps him survive in Dublin.Another custom in former days in religious life was to avoid "particular friendships" or close associations with one particular individual.One was always expected to be with or travel in groups of three or more to prevent exclusion of other community members or possibly even more scandalous assignations.

Most human beings need close associations with others.We are naturally attracted to some, not to others, and develop friendships based on shared interests.This is a gift of being human.Close and intimate friendships of any sort were frowned upon and discouraged in Hopkins' time in community. Hopkins realized that his attraction to Brother John grew with the passing of each day and that he was involved in a particular friendship.He considered ending it but rationalized his situation and soldiered on.Yet, he continued to burn with guilt. Another person recognized the close attachment between Brother John and Hopkins and through delivering a series of hate notes under the door of Hopkins' room during the night, put the fear of God in him.Hopkins eventually told John about the notes but out of fear of losing him did not reveal the full import of the notes' contents

The diary continues to reveal Hopkins' feelings about and interactions with John.John was a seminarian who was sent to the university to study and because of his own poor health.He had doubts about his own ordination because of this.One afternoon he and Hopkins were caught in a rainstorm while out walking.They returned to the school both thoroughly drenched.The next day, John is ill and develops pneumonia.Hopkins is beside himself, wracked with guilt and feels responsible for John's illness.Another hate note commenting on their walks and implying that John wouldn't be sick if it weren't for Hopkins is pushed under Gerard's door.John eventually recovers but is going to need time to convalesce. He is sent to his family's home in the country to do so.

Conroy recovers from his pneumonia. Time passes and he is transferred to teach at another school. John flourishes in his new assignment and invites Gerard to visit. During a conversation with John before going back to Dublin, Gerard reveals his interest in and liking for the poetry of Walt Whitman.John is scandalized and Gerard realizes that he has probably revealed too much about himself.

Robert Waldron's The Secret Dublin Diary of Gerard Manley Hopkins is a brilliantly and lovingly written tale of a man who struggled to love and accept himself as he was.He was attracted to male beauty and male companionship and today would be considered gay.Although there were no words to describe it then, Hopkins had to battle the oppression of homophobia in many of its guises, internalized, cultural and institutional.

One of Waldron's diary entries describes a visit that Hopkins made to the Royal Academy to view "The Vagrants", a painting by Frederick Walker a well-known Victorian artist.Waldron's book is beautifully designed with its French flap and its cover is graced with Hopkins' favorite Walker painting, "The Bathers."

This novella is both charming and a joy to read.I recommend it highly. ... Read more

Product Description
The author's verse contains the unique paradox of a poet/priest who wanted to evoke the spiritual essence of nature sensuously, and to communicate this revelation using innovative technique and natural language. This collection gives voice to his feelings of intense spiritual longing. 25,000 orint. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

very tiny, good or bad?
I purchased this book so as to have something to cram into my pocket everytime i left my room.The book is nice for its size and its ability to fit into any pocket; however, the selection of poems is quite limited by its lack of page numbers.Hopkins has his glory, but this edition is only for those on the go.

Check out "A Pocket Book of Moder Verse" for a more pagey, portable book. ... Read more

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The first of eight volumes of Hopkins's Collected Works to be published, Oxford Essays and Notes presents a remarkable cache of previously unpublished papers, including forty-five essays which Hopkins produced during his undergraduate career at Oxford (1863-1867), only seven of which were reproduced in the 1959 edition of Journals and Papers. Topics range from Platonic philosophy to theories of the imagination, from ancient history to then-contemporary politics and voting rights. Also included are notes from a commonplace book, a remarkable "dialogue" about aesthetics (featuring a fictionalized John Ruskin figure), and the lecture notes Hopkins prepared in the winter of 1868 while teaching at John Henry Newman's Oratory School in Birmingham--writings in which he explores, for the first time, the theories of inscape and instress so central to his poetic practice. The edition is fully annotated and provides a detailed introduction that situates historically Hopkins's academic and creative efforts.

The twelve notebooks represent Hopkins's intellectual and aesthetic development while studying with some of the greatest scholars of the era (Benjamin Jowett, Walter Pater, and T. H. Green), as well as the ethical and spiritual anxieties he wrestled with while deciding to convert to Catholicism (John Henry Newman received him into the Church in 1866). Hopkins never wrote to please his tutors or the university professors--he wrote vividly and searchingly in response to the challenges they presented. Whether evaluating Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the role of "neutral" England in the American civil war, or the comparative merits of classical sculpture, his first instinct was always to frame the difficult questions involved and work towards a "counter" argument. ... Read more

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This is Hopkins's most famous poem. Its reception was at first mixed, objection being made to Hopkins's experiments with what he called "sprung rhythm", but as "difficult" poetry became the norm, it found great favour. ... Read more

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In his poetry Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) sought to discover afresh the potentialities of language, and to that end developed his idiosyncratic theories of instress, inscape and sprung rhythm. Hopkins's verse is also informed by his religious beliefs; having converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 1866, he became a Jesuit priest eleven years later. However, his poetry is free from a sense of religious dogma, and instead offers a whole-hearted involvement with all aspects of life, a love of nature and a search for a unifying sacramental view of creation. His best-known poems include 'The Wreck of the Deutschland', 'The Windhover', 'Pied Beauty', 'Spring and Fall', 'Carrion Comfort' and 'Harry Ploughman'. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Freaky Printer Errors Cause You to Lose 1/3 of the Poems
Well, I got this "free" on paperback swap dot com, so I suppose I shouldn't complain, but on page 4 this book starts over from the beginning, and instead of giving you pp 5-36 gives you pp. frontispiece-xxxii AGAIN.

This means you miss the end of Poem 1, the totality of Poems 2-29, and for some reason Poem 31 is also omitted.

You do get Poems 32-98, plus prose selections (early diaries and journals, letters, and devotional writings) and modern critical views. (Oh, also remember that you do get the table of contents and pages i-xxxii of the intro TWICE!)

Please, someone tell me that I got a freak printing of this book.

I'm no Gerard Manley Hopkins expert and I just wanted a general introduction, so this will suffice, but it is definitely disappointing.

Very nice place to begin with Hopkins
For someone (as I was) curious about Hopkins, this little Everyman volume provides great value with an excellent selection of writings. In addition to the standard introductory essay and chronology, Walford Davies also includes a handsome array of critical responses to Hopkins and a bibliography for further reading.

I'll be reading further in Hopkin's journals, if I can find them. The selections printed here would be inspirational for any dedicated diarist-- Hopkins took an unflinching look at nature-- recording with delicacy and accuracy and without sentimentality.

It will take me longer tto really digest the poetry. I can see what the critics mean by comparing Hopkins to Whitman, but as these are fairly clearly meant to be read out loud, the value is less in a single reading. Even still, poems like "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child" and "To R.B." were haunting and evocative at the very first read. ... Read more

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A detailed intrduoduction to and commentary on the poetry of Hopkins, exploring the significance of contemporary cultural issues and the poet's life as Catholic convert and Jesuit priest.

In this exemplary study guide, John Gilroy traces Hopkins's life from his early schooldays, his undergraduate years at Oxford and conversion to Catholicism, to his work as a Jesuit scholar and poet-priest; explains the core principles of Hopkins's innovative and challenging poetry, including sections on inscape, instress and sprung rhythm; provides a detailed critical commentary on most of the major poems: The Wreck of the Deutschland, God's Grandeur, The Starlight Night, As Kingfishers, Spring, The Sea and the Skylark, In the Valley of the Elwy, The Windhover, Pied Beauty, The Caged Skylark, Hurrahing in Harvest, The Lantern out of Doors, Duns Scotus's Oxford, Binsey Poplars, Henry Purcell, The Candle Indoors, Felix Randal, Spring and Fall, Inversnaid, Ribblesdale, To What Serves Mortal Beauty, Patience, the six 'Terrible Sonnets', Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves, Harry Ploughman, Tom's Garland, That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire, 'Thou art indeed just', 'To R.B.'; and explores the history of Hopkins criticism from that of his own contemporaries to twentieth century and current critical approaches. Also available in Pdf format from the publisher and from MyiLibrary.com.

John Gilroy took his BA at the University of Newcastle and his MPhil at the University of Warwick. He is co-author of A Commentary on Wordsworth's Prelude, Books 1-5 (London: RKP, 1983) and has contributed to various literary publications. He was senior lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge from 1974 until 2006, and is a course director for the University of Cambridge's residential and international programmes. He is the author of a best-selling study of Philip Larkin in this series.



... Read more

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The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was a practitioner of strict asceticism in its broadest definition--the refusal of physical pleasure or comfort in the interests of moral or spiritual gain. As a result, his commentators have felt obliged to take a stand approving or disapproving of this rigorous self-discipline: Many idealize his allegiance to the Society of Jesus as motivated by his determination to conquer his attraction to other men, and thus as the source of the spiritual strength from which his eucharistic and Christological verse derived. Others decry his monasticism as the regrettably oppressive regimen from which he was able to escape only occasionally through his sensuous, sometimes overtly homoerotic verse.

Julia F. Saville uses Lacanian theories of sublimation and courtly love to reconfigure this long-standing rift in the field of Hopkins criticism. Her book displaces hagiographic interpretations of the poet's life, arguing that Hopkins's poetics of homoerotic asceticism shaped his work in such a way that his career should be viewed not as a steady linear progression but as an ongoing process of negotiating his desire. It also constitutes a map tracing the alternating practices of self-discipline and self-indulgence, self-expression and self-silencing performed by Hopkins's verse.

Saville presents a new reading of asceticism that does not advocate or condemn its practice. What is needed, she argues, is a reading that explains first the dialectical capacity of asceticism both to constrain and to liberate, to cause discomfort and to give satisfaction, and second, the ethical value of recognizing and encouraging this dialectical operation.

A Queer Chivalry highlights the strange blending of sensual delight and strict self-denial in Hopkins's courtly verse, initiating a new trend in criticism that celebrates the poet's queer status as the Victorian troubadour-priest. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Smart, Sensitive, and Penetrating
Excellent application of contemporary literary insights to a fascinating poet.It is easy to misunderstand queer criticism--particularly in light of the homophobia that continues to trip up many people--but this is an important contribution to the body of Hopkins scholarship.

Hopkins: ascetic or hedonist?
Saville makes the dangerous mistake of taking current fashions and imposing them on the 19th century.Using some current notion of ascetic and applying it to the time of Hopkins is not to use his own sense of ascetic.The further inference that his ascetic behavior merely hides his truly voluptuous homoerotic "true" self is tenuous at best.The mystic often expresses in ways which connect to us as physical and passionate rather than logical and cool.Trying to transfer it to the courtly tradition flies in the face of his inspiration from Duns Scotus, and more importantly, from his poetic advances which not only invigorate the earliest of our poetic tradition, but thrust forward in his own structures.The author is advised to read his weather observations and all of his other very Victorian naturalist pursuits.Every day is nature's news from God.Cloud patterns, patterns of animal coloring, fireplaces, birds and farmers are not the objects of homoerotic obsession.More scientific than queer (in its older usage) more modern than courtly. ... Read more

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Your directors for this retreat,Turning Pain Into Power, areJesuit priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and abbess Hildegard ofBingen.Hopkins, a profound appreciator of life, suffered frequentbouts of melancholia and depression. Without benefit of worldy successfor his poetry, the consolation of family life or the elation of fullyinvesting his gifts, Hopkins remained hopeful, often cheerful and everfaithful to Christ. Hildegard, gifted with visions since childhood,recorded her wisdom, guiding readers through the mysteries of theBible, the complexities of the moral life and the narrow gate into thekingdom. She became prophet, teacher, preacher and diplomat. LikeHopkins, she produced poetry and also music, medical and herbalguides, and scientific writings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Retreat with Gerard Manley Hopkins and Hildegard of Bingen
I've used several of the books in the "Retreat with..." series, and find this one of the very best!Thank you. ... Read more