Gerard Manley Hopkins Festival in Newbridge

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean year, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! Away. Gerard Manley Hopkins, "I Wake and Feel"Today, more so than during his lifetime, Gerard Manley Hopkins speaks to the hearts and souls of nations to those who are willing to listen. My first introduction to Hopkins occurred when I was a sophomore undergraduate in a British literature course. Already a mother of three children, I found serious study time came during the hours of 9:00 P.M. and 1:00 A.M. or later. I discovered quickly that reading and interpreting Hopkins'ss poetry was not an activity that I could simply breeze through. I will, however, never forget that after numerous readings of Hopkins's work and trying to explicate his poems line by line and word for word, my analyses of them eventually brought an unexpected epiphany -- an explosion of new thoughts, ideas, concepts, and a different view of the value and beauty of the simple things in nature that I had taken for granted. Certainly, my readings of Hopkins's poems gave me a deeper appreciation of the omniscience of God and the wonderment of nature itself as well as the magnificence of the universe in which I lived. I also must admit that I loved the challenge of discovering the instress in inscapes that Hopkins experienced in even the tiniest flower petal or star in a night filled sky or a small child in pain. Gradually, I gained a deeper understanding of his unusual poetic style that conveyed his experiences, visions, and feelings. He created such wonderful, realistic images through his innovative use of sprung rhythm, unusual metaphors and similes, instress in his inscapes, stinging irony, use of paradoxes, alliteration, and other poetic tools-images such as the falcon flying high and low above the earth's surface and the tree stretching its branches reaching for the heavens. I especially found his complex vocabulary and use of biblical and classical allusions challenging as I was unfamiliar with many of them. Nevertheless, I do love a challenge. In fact, Hopkins influenced the expansion of my vocabulary, literary, and historical knowledge, as well as the way I viewed the world around me. Through Hopkins's poems, I also developed a stronger belief in the existence of God and that perhaps there was hope for a better world through the combined efforts of each of us, regardless of our nationality, race, or culture. As I began teaching secondary advanced English students, and, later, college students, I devoted serious time to Hopkins's work, hoping to instill in them the same kind of appreciation for his poetry. Until 1995, most of my students worked as hard to unravel the complexity of Hopkins's words and style as I had, and they were very successful, taking with them a new appreciation for his thoughts and ideas and writing poetry about their feelings and experiences. In 1995, however, I and other college professors of English on my campus began noticing a change in our students' academic maturity and levels of reading, interpreting, and writing abilities-so much so that our English Department began developing required pre-skills test and developmental reading and English courses in basic skills in which to channel those students who needed more preparation before taking our college level composition courses. With a continual increase of students from other countries who spoke very little English, we added additional ESOL courses and leveled the developmental English and Reading courses. For a period of time, we again experienced in our classes successful students. Because most students are more motivated when challenged, I continued assigning Hopkins's work along with that of other complex poets such as Yeats, Arnold, and Auden-and all was well with my literature classes. Unfortunately, paradise was short-lived as I soon began hearing the following comments: Hopkins is dead! … I don't understand his poetry! … His words don't make sense! … What makes him so important that we have to study about him? … I read that poem ten times, and I still don't understand what he is saying! …Soon after hearing these and similar comments, I ceased assigning Hopkins's poetry to my college students. Literature should speak to students. If it fails to do so, students are turned off and no longer motivated. Motivating students is perhaps the most difficult task a literature teacher confronts. Reading and understanding the complexities and language in Hopkins's poetry, in particular, proved very difficult for these students, especially those who lacked sufficient reading and vocabulary skills and who lacked an imagination and critical thinking skills. For those with little or no emotional intellect upon which to build, teaching Hopkins became a downhill battle. Part of the problem I blamed on new types of technology that absorbed students' time in game playing and other activities-technology that schools and colleges should have educationally been using more effectively. Another reason for students' declining skills, I believe, were and are the results of national and state mandated academic skills tests used to determine whether the student had successfully mastered the curriculum for his/her grade level. Basically, American students in both elementary and secondary schools began spending much of their classroom time focusing only on material that would appear on their mandated tests that they had to pass in order to advance to the next level or to graduate. Ironically, more memorization of material occurred than assimilation and application of knowledge and few developed analytical and critical thinking skills. Furthermore, literature and literary skills were often slighted. In recent years, many of my students are unfamiliar with many of the writers that were once taught in secondary schools. I soon found myself spending more time on writers that in previous years I only briefly reviewed. Since my task was to present literature that aroused students' interests that they could associate with and that they could connect with currents events that would promote interpretation, thinking skills, and class discussions and debates, I found myself saving the more complex writers until near the end of the semester so that students would be better prepared to tackle them. Unfortunately, this left little time to properly introduce Hopkins and other favorites of mine. As the world changes, however, so too do its inhabitants, including my American students. I credit students' change in attitude, interest, and motivation, especially students from the middle class, to the September 11, 2001 terrorists attack on America. Bad events do often bring positive results. With the terrorists' attacks on America, Americans, including its youth, experienced drastic changes in their lives and in their emotions, thoughts, and concepts of well being. Life, love, family, friends, religion, and national security dominated new and higher levels of importance. Their lives, dreams, goals, and sense of well-being shook in chaos the core of every generation, from the oldest to the youngest. Even toddlers and infants exhibited high levels of stress-home life had changed, and Mom and Dad reacted with strange and unexpected behaviors. As Americans struggled to regain at least a small semblance of balance in their lives, the empty void haunted them daily. To fill that void, many turned to God and other forms of spiritual guidance, searching for answers that still today remain beyond their grasp. Their normal lives and, for the most part, carefree ways of living ceased to exist. Freedom, trust, and security were no longer a given aspect of life. Drastically increased security meant individual Americans were victims of restricted freedoms. No longer were they free to walk into museums, government buildings, and airports without being searched from head to toe. Increased military and local police security stood guard reminding them constantly of the terrorists' attacks and threats. Each day, in fact, Americans seem to lose another freedom that they had always taken for granted. No longer can families meet their loved ones in the airport terminals as they exit their planes nor can they wait inside the terminals until they board their planes. Items they have always been allowed to travel with or carry into certain buildings are now restricted. When Bush declared war on Iraq, Americans watched families and friends break apart, disrupting still another arena of their lives. Americans have experienced mortality through countless deaths of loved ones. In my class, I have watched my students drop my class to meet their country's call, and I have held students in tears whose fiancés had been killed. As we adjust to these changes, we are also adjusting our attitudes and rethinking our beliefs. In other words, Americans' philosophy is at a crossroad as it relates to the world, to God, and to themselves. Many Americans continue to question the justification of war as we learn new truths. The July 7, 2005 terrorists' attacks on London serve as a reminder as to how chaotic life is and that the world as a whole is out of balance. What I have experienced during the past two years is an amazing change in my students' attitudes and thirst for knowledge as it pertains to their spiritual being and to their emotional intellect. Granted, the changes that technology brings to us as it absorbs more and more professional, technical careers are also partially responsible for the changes in students that I am witnessing. Only now are we beginning to realize that to provide employment and better career opportunities for our graduating college youths, we must develop more right brain designed courses that will enable them to develop these kinds of academic skills and enhance their emotional intellect. In essence, this is good news for the humanities division in colleges and universities, but it also means new challenges for both teachers and students, specifically those who seem to depend basically on left-brain intellectual skills. Consequently, I am excited that my students are now asking more questions and engaging more in classroom debate than they have in years. A sign in their maturation is their obvious search for self-identity in this chaotic world, and Hopkins's poetry is once again at the top of my curriculum for British literature, and many of my contemporary students appear to enjoy the complexity of his challenging work because he actually speaks to their spiritual quest and emotional needs. This spring, I was not prepared for what happened in my classes. I introduced Hopkins and noted certain poetic techniques he uses and assigned certain poems for the next class meeting. To my surprise, most of my students came to class with their written interpretations, prepared to discuss and debate each other's interpretations and concepts. What a great class session it was! I listened, without comments, to their arguments. When class time ended, many of my students milled around outside the class room and continued their discussions and debates. During the next class, students exhibited evidence of individual, outside research, pointing out to each other how in "The Windhover" that Hopkins's creation of the early morning, free-flying Falcon winging its path over earth exceeded descriptive imagery and served as a metaphor for Christ, comparing him to a knight riding a horse and as praise for the beauty and existence of Christ as evidenced in nature. They excitedly noted how Hopkins's use of the skate's heel simile, his sprung rhythm as in "dapple-dawn, Falcon, in his riding/ . . . striding . . ./ . . . gliding/ . . .hiding . . .," and his alliteration lent movement and music to the power of the falcon's flight, literally singing his praise for Christ as in the lines, Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! (lines 8-10) They also expressed that "The Windhover" had given them a sense of oneness with God through the descriptive images of the bird and earth. With Hopkins's lyric on "Spring and Fall" and "The Wreck of the Deutschland," they also picked up his compassionate regard for man's mortality. In "Spring and Fall," students related Hopkins's analogy of death with the falling leaves that Margaret witnesses with that of a children's book, Freddy the Leaf, and their personal experiences with the death of a loved one. They also added their feelings of great sadness over the destructive forces of Nature and man as Hopkins vividly depicts in stanza 15 in "The Wreck of the Deutschland" as well as man's ability to deflect the harsh blows dealt him: Hope had grown grey hairs,
Hope had mourning on,
Trenched with tears, carved with cares, and in stanza 17: They fought with God's cold-
And they could not and fell to the deck
(Crushed them) or water (and drowned them)
or rolled
With the sea-romp over the wreck.
Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-
broke rabble,
The woman's wailing, the crying of child without
Check-
Till a lioness arose breasting the babble,
A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told. Rather than give a test over Hopkins's poetry, I asked the students to focus on their favorite Hopkins's poem and explain why it was their favorite. The best way to illustrate the dynamic effect Hopkins's poetry had on my American college students is to present here as it was written, replete with all its errors, one of their responses to the assignment. Russell is a married male in his mid-twenties who, by occupation, is a welder who loves riding motorcycles and dressing in blue jeans and a T-shirt. His declared major is business and accounting. Russell focused on "The Starlight Night" and used the title Beauty at its Best: "The Starlight Night"
Gerald Manley Hopkins
Beauty At Its Best This is perhaps my favorite poem in quite a long while. Hopkins brings vivid pictures from his words. I can walk beside him through the forest as he observes the wonders of the night. Through his writing, he displays amazing vision. This was a poem that invoked something much more than mere rhyme and word trickery. Each line produces its own picture worthy of a book cover. Now my analysis may seem a bit rich and overdone, but it is only fitting for a poem that can create such perfect and lifelike pictures in the mind's eye of its reader. As I read the poem the first time I gathered a sense of visual perfection. Then out of curiosity for more I read the numbered explanations at the bottom of the page. Having read this, I reread the poem several times. Each time it becomes clearer, and more beautiful than the time before. Hopkins has a grasp of the wonders of nature second to few writers. He writes about all of the beautiful scenery that he sees at night. The poem is about a starry night that produces visions of familiarthings in a different light. He describes a grove of trees, a diamond quarry, and leaves on a lawn. All of these are very normal, and often overlooked. Hopkins manages to describe the beauty in normal scenes that a person experiences in the right light, or frame of mind. Hopkins has a firm belief in God, and all his wonders. It is no accident that he describes scenes and relates them to the wonderful world that God gave us. You don't have to be religious or spiritual to feel this poem, however, all you really need is to read it. This poem is full of treats for anyone wanting to take a little fantasy walk. I took just such a walk as I read, and then thought about the poem for a while. I am not altogether sure about why, but there is no doubt that it moved me in a profound way. Maybe it is just the style of writing that Hopkins uses, or even that I am impressed by such magical description. I do know this, however, Hopkins moved me. The examples that he used for visualization were fantastic. I really enjoyed this poem. I am not usually prone to writing based on inspiration by Poets or Authors, but in this case I was. As I read the poem and thought about the inspiration behind it, God in this case, I couldn't help but marvel at how familiar things look different when bolstered or inspired by a particular thought, mood, or subject. I decided to write a poem about the moments when things look different, even when they are the same sights we have seen before. A person has to be in a certain mood to see the ordinary as something new and wonderful, it can be caused by a variety of different reasons. New love perhaps, or a stroke of good fortune, maybe just getting done with a long task and reveling in the accomplishment. The ironic thing about this is that the mood seldom last. This is not to say that people don't remain happy. I mean only to imply that things level back to the ordinary, and that special mood is lost until the next one. This is how most of us go through life. We might be happy most of the time, or sad for some, but there are those rare moments when we are elated and this is when magic like Hopkins describes occurs. The interesting thing about this phenomenon is that it is the stuff that life is made of. When I look at my life, I realize that it is spent mostly on a quest for just these types of feelings. This is, after all, when we know things are as right as they get. Isn't that what we're all really after. The constant charge towards success is really just a means to an end. If we achieve the things that we really want in life then we get more of these wonderful moments. This is what I believe Hopkins is writing about. His inspiration is God in this case. And that is a pretty good one. It is still, however, a personal choice that he made as a means to take him to that place where everything is right and wonderful. Hopkins found his inspiration is right or wrong necessarily, each of us simply chooses our own means to get there. My poem is about the wonderful feelings that I experience when I have arrived at that moment of wonder when things are seen differently. And it is also about the struggle to sustain that type of feeling, or get to the next one. It is this that motivates me to do better, try again, work hard, and keep learning. Russell's response was followed by his poem that he mentions in the text: Fleeting Glimpses Of Life
Magical sights! Of the kind only I can see!
When I'm in a peculiar fantasy of singular wonder!
New sights and smells to make me pillage and plunder!
It only happens so often, and passes all too quickly!
Haven't I seen it all, but not this way, different and tricky!
How long can I make it last before it all goes asunder!
It's in the mood, this is the trick, I mustn't blunder!
I must stay the course and save the keep; this is the key.
At night, a roller coaster set upon a lighted trestle!
A fireside bed, warm and glowing, waits for me to nestle!
The ship on the morning horizon, a beautiful vessel!
A snow covered hill, snug under a blanket moon!
The pond, dancing with the sun, high noon!
Beauty and wonder in my mood! To keep the feel I must wrestle.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa— Russell Frankly, I was stunned and amazed with Russell's response. It was a moment in time that left me breathless. Others in the class and in a class this summer have been equally influenced with Hopkins's poetry and have found comfort and renewed energy about their lives, their spirituality, and their future goals. Hopkins's themes and theories and his intensity of focus seem to be addressing many of these college students' questions and individual needs as they develop new methods of coping with a world in chaos, war, and death. Finally, writing poetry that expresses their feelings, their quandaries, their pain, their doubts, their spirituality, their criticisms of political and social issues has become a reality for my American students. In numerous essays and letters to friends and colleagues, Hopkins notes that the individual self "supplies the determination, the difference, but the nature supplies the exercise, and in these two things freedom consists." We lose our freedom only if we lose our determination and our will to complete the exercise, whatever it may be. I am indebted to Gerard Manley Hopkins for the positive influence he has had on my American college students and their search for answers and their spiritual nature. With Hopkins's own words, I praise his gifts to the twentieth-first century: Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O then if in my lagging lines you miss
The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,
My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss
Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa("To R. B." Hopkins, lines 9-14)Works Cited Hopkins, Gerard Manley. "I Wake and Feel." Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose. Ed. New York: Penguin, 1953; rpt. 1963: 62. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. "Spring and Fall." Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose. Ed. New York: Penguin, 1953; rpt. 1963: 50. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. "The Starlight Night." Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and
Prose. Ed. New York: Penguin, 1953; rpt. 1963: 27. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. "The Wreck of the Deutschland." Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose. Ed. New York: Penguin, 1953; rpt. 1963: 12. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. "The Windhover." Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose. Ed. New York: Penguin, 1953; rpt. 1963: 30. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. "To R. B." Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose. Ed. New York: Penguin, 1953; rpt. 1963: 68. Wilson, Evelyn M. Classroom and Administrative Observations. Tarrant County College, South Campus. Fort Worth, Texas. 1995-2005.____, Russell. Literary Response Journal: "The Starlight Night." April 2005.

Gerard Manley Hopkins Archive - free resource
Search our Gerard Manley Hopkins Archive for Lecturers, keywords, poems etc

Hopkins's Influence on American College Students

Evelyn Wilson Tarrant County College, USA

Gerard Manley Hopkins Archive - free resource Search our Gerard Manley Hopkins Archive for Lecturers, keywords, poems etc

Hopkins's Influence on American College Students

Evelyn Wilson Tarrant County College, USA

Gerard Manley Hopkins Archive - free resource
Search our Gerard Manley Hopkins Archive for Lecturers, keywords, poems etc