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jessen's review against another edition
5.0
Update: still a full 5 stars! His poems are undeniably rich and beautiful, certainly worthy of reading again and again.
Original review: I just finished this collection, and I've already started the book over to read through his poetry again. Needless to say, I have definitely found my new favorite poet. His writing is so vivid, beautiful, and unexpected that his meaning and the emotion his poetry elicits are even more effective, since you've had to ponder his words. I know the same could (should) be said for a lot of poetry, but his is distinctive in a way I haven't put my finger on yet- and it's refreshing. Hopkins himself said in a letter to his friend, "why, sometimes one enjoys and admires the very lines one cannot understand… " His poetry is full of awe at the created world, and often of sorrow, which to me is a marker of his personal experience of human nature and of God. His poetry reads like an excess of emotion which just bubbled out of him- his imagery is almost startlingly beautiful- so it was interesting at the end to read his notes on how precise he was with his sprung rhythm and the technical correctness of his poetry. It reads as though it was effortless. I absolutely recommend!
Original review: I just finished this collection, and I've already started the book over to read through his poetry again. Needless to say, I have definitely found my new favorite poet. His writing is so vivid, beautiful, and unexpected that his meaning and the emotion his poetry elicits are even more effective, since you've had to ponder his words. I know the same could (should) be said for a lot of poetry, but his is distinctive in a way I haven't put my finger on yet- and it's refreshing. Hopkins himself said in a letter to his friend, "why, sometimes one enjoys and admires the very lines one cannot understand… " His poetry is full of awe at the created world, and often of sorrow, which to me is a marker of his personal experience of human nature and of God. His poetry reads like an excess of emotion which just bubbled out of him- his imagery is almost startlingly beautiful- so it was interesting at the end to read his notes on how precise he was with his sprung rhythm and the technical correctness of his poetry. It reads as though it was effortless. I absolutely recommend!
livtredre's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
4.25
caterpillarnotebooks's review against another edition
5.0
i am sorry but hopkins is one of my favorite poets writing in english & "moonrise" is one of the best poems in history... "parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, eyelid and eyelid of slumber" are you seeing this shit nicki minaj
bartlebybleaney's review against another edition
1.0
People pretend to enjoy Hopkins because they're told to. They're told to because it serves certain schools that have to be propped up artificially because they cannot stand on their own. Hopkins could have been a good poet if he'd bothered writing poetry. Instead, he fuddled about with obscurity and novelty, making himself a cause for future destroyers to take up in order to bolster their own nonsense. Anyone who says they like this stuff can be safely ignored and their opinions on any other poet dismissed out of hand.
gh7's review against another edition
3.0
Hopkins' poems, especially when read aloud, are often astounding feats of musicality. Like the written equivalent of beads of light flickering to nature's pulse on the gossamer strands of a spiderweb. Apparently he pioneered a technique known as sprung rhythm and in his best poems every word does exactly that - springs rhythm, creating a kind of hypnotic ring of enchantment around his subject. Mostly he writes about nature and God. His nature poems had my full attention; his God poems rather less so.
Hopkins' prose bored me silly. Firstly, we get extracts from a journal and almost immediately I got a sense of a man hiding from himself. He appears to have no inner life. Or as if it's something he's concreted over. There's a lot of sensibility responding to nature but it's kind of hollow when there's so little personality attached to the voice. The letters that follow are even more bereft of inspiration or life. He comes across as a varnished surface. Talks complacently about Empire as if it's a rose garden that has to be maintained with diligence. The most emotional he ever gets is when he becomes mildly indignant at a kindly vicar who unprompted, sends one of Hopkins' poems to a local newspaper.
Hopkins became a Catholic priest and destroyed all his early poems. The Catholic church, in his imagination at least, then functioned as a kind of censor on what he wrote. At the end of the day, you're either a poet or poetry is a hobby of yours. Hopkins seems caught up in this dilemma and perhaps it eventually caused him to be less of a poet than he should have been. A natural gift he has in abundance. One wishes he forged for himself a much more interesting and courageous life. Instead he chose to pinch and squeeze himself into the embodiment of Victorian starch, formality and repression. Shelley or Byron he is not.
Hopkins' prose bored me silly. Firstly, we get extracts from a journal and almost immediately I got a sense of a man hiding from himself. He appears to have no inner life. Or as if it's something he's concreted over. There's a lot of sensibility responding to nature but it's kind of hollow when there's so little personality attached to the voice. The letters that follow are even more bereft of inspiration or life. He comes across as a varnished surface. Talks complacently about Empire as if it's a rose garden that has to be maintained with diligence. The most emotional he ever gets is when he becomes mildly indignant at a kindly vicar who unprompted, sends one of Hopkins' poems to a local newspaper.
Hopkins became a Catholic priest and destroyed all his early poems. The Catholic church, in his imagination at least, then functioned as a kind of censor on what he wrote. At the end of the day, you're either a poet or poetry is a hobby of yours. Hopkins seems caught up in this dilemma and perhaps it eventually caused him to be less of a poet than he should have been. A natural gift he has in abundance. One wishes he forged for himself a much more interesting and courageous life. Instead he chose to pinch and squeeze himself into the embodiment of Victorian starch, formality and repression. Shelley or Byron he is not.
mothwing's review against another edition
5.0
Like Jack Donne, this poet is a large part of the reason why I am comfortable calling myself a Christian, this poem is everything Christianity is to me.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
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 Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
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 Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.