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Brad
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since 1999-08-20
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Jejudo, South Korea

0 posted 2007-11-23 02:54 PM


I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

quote:
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Self yeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.


Reasons for posting this:

Do you not hear a hint of D.T.'s hammer?

As many of you already know, I'm not a huge fan of alliteration overkill, but this one works for me. I hear a 'voice'. When I say that, I mean that the poem almost screams to be read aloud, it doesn't sound like anything that's being posted above or below it, it explodes in power, in emotion. Yet, with all that emotion do the metaphors work along side that? Is it or does it have a comic moment or two? How does it translate to readers well over a hundred years later?

At the same time, I was no doubt influenced by Jim's crytpic moments in the 'Enough' thread. This is for him.  

What do you do with it?

I want to do three things here.

First: we need to spend more time on poetry outside the blue pages (though this is from the Classic Poems section). Now and then, let's post poems that give the rest of us examples, not necessarily to emulate, but to learn from and even translate into the twenty-first century world.  

Second: Why not simply post poems and let members read and comment, praise or condemn, analyze or scoff, as they see fit?

Don't worry, he's dead.

Third: it raises the quality bar in this forum.  

Or rather I think it does. What do you think?

note: Thanks for pointing out the typo, Jim.

[This message has been edited by Brad (11-25-2007 04:17 AM).]

© Copyright 2007 Brad - All Rights Reserved
serenity blaze
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since 2000-02-02
Posts 27738

1 posted 2007-11-23 04:27 PM


I agree with your reasoning, but I think it should be done sparingly.

(Didn't we try this a while back with another forum though?)

But it might work here--incorporated into this forum. And for the foggy-brain addled like me, if you are going to do this, add explanations of what form, what scheme, etc. Maybe even a little background--including dates.

I used to have a better memory, now I have to rely on rote. So a good study guide would be very beneficial to me. I run around as it is behind Pipsters--and elsewhere--asking people, "What's the form? What's the meter scheme?" etc. I also think that it should be allowed only by a moderator, or at least, moderator approval to avoid potential copyright problems as overly enthusiastic poetry lovers might rush to push their personal favorites. (That is also why I think a numbered allotment should be maintained.)

Also: for this to be of ultimate benefit, I think that if this is to be incorporated, please define the terminology, even ad nauseum. It might drive some of you more, um, well-versed poets a bit mad to have to define what you may think is common knowledge over and over again, but hey--it's not just for me. We have new people in and out of here all the time. (My own daughter belongs to Pip, and she knows what alliteration is NOW--but she didn't when she first started.)  

So it would take some dedication, but it could work. I'd enjoy it. But then, when I'm not all dark and sinister--I'm rather easy going.

TomMark
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2 posted 2007-11-23 04:28 PM


The poem: desperation.

Your suggestion: do you hint that you are going to change this Forum to Piptic Monthly?

[This message has been edited by TomMark (11-23-2007 05:16 PM).]

serenity blaze
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3 posted 2007-11-23 04:28 PM


I just read what I posted and I'm not gonna edit it.

It's proof of my bad memory.

*laughing*

serenity blaze
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since 2000-02-02
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4 posted 2007-11-23 04:34 PM


TomMark--I don't think the whole forum would have to change.

This would just be what we here in New Orleans call "lagniappe." (It's a nice custom we have here where proprietors give people a little something extra for free.)

This is really growing on me, too, Brad.

I think if you stuck to one poem a month--it could work as an encouragement to utilize poetic devices and themes. (We now know I don't respond well to challenges--but others do.)

And since anything extra is gravy, just do it. Just don't go getting all emotional and frustrated if it doesn't work.

Or just do it with no expectation of outcome.

I can see it as an addition of "our theme of the month is: blah bleh blah blah and the example.

Go for it. Just JUMP. DO IT!!!! *laughing*

TomMark
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5 posted 2007-11-23 04:53 PM


Dear SB,
Sir Brad wants to rise the quality bar. He doesn't mean that we could only post here after being approved by Nobel Committee, does he?


serenity blaze
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since 2000-02-02
Posts 27738

6 posted 2007-11-23 05:12 PM


Um, TM?

That's pretty much what I thought I was trying to say to you. Glad we agree.


oceanvu2
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since 2007-02-24
Posts 1066
Santa Monica, California, USA
7 posted 2007-11-25 04:05 AM


To start to get at the meat of this sonnet, it might help to put it in the context of some of Hopkins’ particulars.  A Victorian, he left the Anglican church, became a Jesuit priest, and it is his Christian/religious concerns that inform most of his post-conversion poetry.

He also suffered from what the 20th century would call profound clinical depression, which he addresses here.


I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

quote:

“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.”

Hopkins uses “fell” in its sense of loss or questioning of faith, which, in his practice, would be a sin, and gives the word a specific import.  For Hopkins, this is an agony, depression and beyond.  Hopkins uses the words “fell” and “fall” most often in his poetry as nouns, not verbs.   Similarly, “day” refers not to the mechanical rising of the sun, but to God’s grace.  

    
“What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.”

Here, Hopkins asserts his poetic voice, or style, if you will, his use of alliteration and pointed eccentricities of punctuation.  The “we” is both editorial and a reference to the conversation between mind and heart, doubt and belief. “yet longer light's delay.” is also a religious reference to the longer light of living in God’s presence for eternity.

In “With witness I speak this,”  “witness” may be read as “testament."

                                        “But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

Perhaps the above clues will help unravel the metaphors in the above and subsequent lines of the poem.  One other sticky point is that Hopkins is inconsistent in his work about capitalizing he or him when referring to God or Christ.  One has to consider the word in its specific context.

Brad: I do not hear D.T’s hammer.  I hear the influence of Keats and Swinburne.  I don’t find comic moments.  I find a profound and consistent expression of depression, and Hopkins’ belief that he is not alone in this painful quagmire.  “I am gall, I am bitterness” should translate well to anyone in the 21st century who cannot escape the demons of doubt and despair.

Hopkins considered “Windhover” to be his most accomplished poem.  “Windhover,” “Pied Beauty” and “The Wreck of the Deutschland” are perhaps his most well known poems, all subjected to ongoing on or off the mark interpretations.  (This comes under suggestions for further reading.)

His work does not sound like anything else posted above or below, because he sounds, and I say very much for the better, like himself.  

PS-ish.  I don’t think I have “cryptic" moments.  But then, I do carry on conversations in my head that not everyone is privy to.  I think my answers are generally clear, although sometimes I forget to include the “what was the question” part.         

Best,  Jim

[This message has been edited by oceanvu2 (11-25-2007 10:04 AM).]

TomMark
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8 posted 2007-11-25 01:01 PM


Thank you Jim. A wonderful mini-lecture to me.

Tom

TomMark
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9 posted 2007-11-25 01:09 PM


And I hardly found beauty in pessimistic tune.
oceanvu2
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10 posted 2007-11-25 01:34 PM


Hi Tom: You may have captured it well with your comment: "The poem: desperation."  It might also be read as a prayer of supplication.  In that sense, it's less pessimistic, more a cry of the heart.

What do you make of the final stanza?

Best, Jim

TomMark
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11 posted 2007-11-25 07:19 PM


Oh, Jim, Are you giving me an open-book quiz? But you have not finished interpreting the whole poem yet. So where  shall I quote the answer?  don't be too hard on me!!!

"Self yeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse."

Based on his religion changing (he was searching for something. I say it was God he tried to find and finally he ended up as a Jesuit priest so he must be agree with their doctrine. One can not find God by Human teaching only. It is the work of spirit.) He must be very familiar with "In Ignatius` Spiritual Exercises, God and the Devil are presented as active players in the world and in the human psyche."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_Exercises_of_Ignatius_of_Loyola

The last verse, a struggle of his spirit..
I Am...his God's role,
sweating selves....the evil role

Human beings has our own bodies and spirit...which is done by God's grace. and there is a granted free will too by God. So one can live (or live well in human eye's) without acknowledging God or Evil and one still can live (or live well after behave so unaccepted by general society.) Hopkins seemed that he did not allow himself to be a human. He either be God's image or evil. But Of course he could not achieve this in reality.

My thought. if related to the poem.

Thank you for asking question, Jim. But don't ask more. I am at the end of my wit.

I believe that Stephen could understand better.

oceanvu2
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since 2007-02-24
Posts 1066
Santa Monica, California, USA
12 posted 2007-11-25 08:34 PM


Hi Tom!  I think you have it exactly!  I don't think everyone will agree with you or me.  Someone is bound to say or see it differently, but they're not going to say it much better!  

It wasn't a pop quiz, and it's a good thing nobody is giving out grades.  The satisfaction lies in just looking at something and working it out for yourself, looking stuff up, finding relationships and that sort of thing.

For me, at least, that's what analysis, informed analysis, is about.

Taxing?  Sometimes for sure. But then you get to be critical, expressing an informed opinion.

Be careful, though.  You can get hooked on that sort of thing!

Best, Jim

hush
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since 2001-05-27
Posts 1653
Ohio, USA
13 posted 2007-11-26 06:18 AM


A comic moment or two? Initially I wanted to answer yes, but upon rereading I couldn't find a certain comic moment. I wonder what that has to say about the poem? Perhaps a comic tone?

I think posting "classic" poetry is a great idea. How about, to keep the influx down, we email them to Brad, who reads and then decides? (Or is that too much of a migraine waiting to happen? )

I for one find this very valuable and intend to look for a poetry collection of Hopkins' next time I go to the bookstore. Thanks.

TomMark
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14 posted 2007-11-26 11:39 AM


Thank you Jim.
For your encouragement. And I am glad that you realized that I had made great effort to answer your question. I did, you know.

Brad
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since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
15 posted 2007-11-26 06:18 PM


Hush,

Yeah, the initial reaction is comic, but that can change.

One of the things that interests me here, besides the style (and I meant that D.T. might have been influenced by G.M.H., not the other way around, or perhaps they were influenced by the same source?), is whether the poem can be read and understood without the biographical view.

I think it can. Maybe.

TomMark
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16 posted 2007-11-26 06:32 PM


Sir Brad, tell me how to read this poem without his background if the poem itself already had many Biblical hints?


Brad
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since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
17 posted 2007-11-26 07:15 PM


You use the Biblical hints.

I think the first half of the poem is perfectly understandable without knowing his eccentricities. The second half is a little more trouble, perhaps, but I think a reading can, if not give an accurate example of intent, at least get certain ideas across that are there in 'spirit'.


oceanvu2
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since 2007-02-24
Posts 1066
Santa Monica, California, USA
18 posted 2007-11-26 07:38 PM


Hi Brad.  Jim be LOL.  My answer is no, Hopkins' poems can't be seriously looked at with out any kind of insight into the influences that shape his work.  This is not a generalization.  It is specific to Hopkins, who, like others (for some reason, Emily Dickens comes to mind) need to be read in context.

I sense you chose this particularly accessible Hopkins' poem as an example.  Good Lord, if you put up one of his original voicings with self-included stress marks, the intracacies of "sprung rhythm," etc, it might have been totally unfathomable.  

Going on, as I do tend to go on from time to time -- Oh, OK, all the time -- I share an experience related to this thread:

I was brought to tears, and I can't hold them back now as I type, by Tom Mark's response to the poem.  

I struggle very hard to help anyone see, think, or feel for themselves.  I'm not a teacher or a preacher, but I cry with joy and amazement when I see my PASSION for something, my remarks on something, this poetry something, get picked up.

I'm not right.  I'm not wrong.  I'm just here, and this poetry thing is really the only thing that has helped me keep it together on any level for fifty of my sixty-three years.

Reverting to cryptic form, I allude to W.C. Fields' preferred epitaph:  "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."  

But I ain't.

Absolute love for you all, Jim.

And I'm not likely to speak like this again.     

TomMark
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19 posted 2007-11-26 10:19 PM


Love you Jim. You are a great man!!!

Pat on the shoulder!!!

Tom

Bob K
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20 posted 2007-12-05 06:40 PM


Dear Brad and others,

     Terrific to see Hopkins being looked at.  My favorite, if I can actually have a favorite among so many knock-outs, is "Margaret," which is always a little bit in the background of my mind, and which comes forward when I'm least expecting it.

     Everybody has interesting stuff to say about this one.  That's good to see.  When Brad says he "hear[s] a voice . . . [and] . . . the poem almost screams to be read aloud," (brackets are my additions) he's understating the situation.  If you're not reading especially Hopkins aloud, you miss a very large part of him; like reading Shakespeare on the page and never seeing a performance.

     What happens when you read Hopkins aloud, and you may have to do it two or three times before you can get the fluency for it, is akin to putting on 3-d glasses.  The sheer joyful musicality of the thing jumps off the page at you, scoops you up and carries you off.  There are not only alliterations in there but internal rhymes and all sorts of vowel music that you need to say and wrap your tongue around before you can begin to taste it.  There may be very real depression here, as oceanvu2 says, and very real struggle, but there is a strong ecstatic edge here as well.

     Hopkins is a poet not only for the intellect, but for the senses as well.  Because he is a poet of the transcendant, it is difficult to decode him.

     The poet Robert Bridges was Hopkin's friend and literary executor.  Bridges was also, if my recall is correct, a poet laureate and the author of two interesting books.  One was about the prosody of English Prose and the other was about the Prosody of English Poetry.  Bridges was the expert's expert and he and Hopkins had many spirited conversations on prosody.  That is Hopkins was doing some reasonably solid stuff, if we can find a way to look at it.

     The upshot of which, if I remember correctly was, yes, Hopkins was using a lot of alliteration, but the thing he was trying hardest to create was something called "sprung rhythm."  By which I think he meant crowding extra accented syllables into the 10 syllable line and making the whole thing sputter and crackle like pop corn.  Frequently the alliterations will mark those extra accents (I haven't looked closely enough myself to give my theory a close check) but the extra accents are real enough, and the placements of them are closer than is usually seen in the regular 10 syllable line.  I don't I'll ever get over what he does with accentual springing; I think his playfulness with vowels is worth dreaming about.  He also uses the springing in other line lengths, by the way.

     None of this is clear unless he's read out loud, and with a little bit of expression.  If read flatly, after all, you can make a love letter sound like a laundy list.

     Too much bad teaching has made us keep our poems on the page and not in our mouths and on our lips and in our ears where they belong.  

     Now, I seem to have forgotten where I picked up this old soap box.  Where do I put it away.  And pardon me,
I have some gophers to herd.  Very unruly gophers. Yours, BobK

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