Index, links to Lectures Hopkins Festival 2009

Gerard Manley Hopkins Poetry Influence on Heaney

Brian Cosgrove
Professor of English (Emeritus)
NUI,
Maynooth.

Brian Cosgrove explores the Poet as Craftsman and the influences of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins on Seamus Heaney. On the one hand there is poetry as "magical incantation", fundamentally "a matter of sound", associated with "an acoustic complex", and, on the other hand, poetry as "a matter of making wise and true meanings . the intelligent disposition and inquisition of human experience" ...

Gerard Manley Hopkins Poetry Influence on Heaney

Lynn Cohen,
Hofstra University,
USA

The Kingfisher as a Symbol for Hopkins and Later Poets

The kingfisher, as a symbol, represents a multitude of opposites such as: “Transformation, calm, multiplicity, unity, felicity, disturbance, revelation...” according to Robert Newman in the Kingfisher 2006 Journal. Newman goes on to say, “To poets, the kingfisher magically embodies . . .a joining of opposites, a preservation of variety, an embrace of challenge and change.” ...

Lynn Cohen was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for Poetry. She is an expert on T. S. Eliot's poetry ...

Read about Kingfisher as Symbol ..

Ciarain O Hare,
Northern Ireland

"The Terrible Sonnets," An Articulate Scream?

Hopkins was appointed to teach in the new Dublin University. Faced with several thousand scripts to mark, an already depressed Hopkins the poor standard of the work in this dolorous task did little to alleviate his depression. Thrust into a world that was foreign and antagonistic to him, Hopkins was aware of the sense of permanence of this appointment, and that he would only be moved if his superiors wished it. His depression worsened.

Whilst writing to Bridges, he suddenly writes in capitals: “AND WHAT DOES ANYTHING AT ALL MATTER?”

Patrick Samway SJ,
St. Joseph's,
Philadelphia,
USA.

The New Testament in Hopkins's Poetry

As a Jesuit scholastic Hopkins daily had an opportunity to listen to the significance of God’s words contained in Holy Writ. Theological studies at St. Beuno’s provided him with an opportunity to focus on Scripture and biblical text s.... Hopkins referred in his sermons 17 times to the Gospel According to St. Matthew, 13 times to Luke, 25 times to Mark, 14 times to John, and 14 times to the writings of St. Paul.
In hindsight, it seems clear that Hopkins and his fellow Jesuits did not have the benefit of a developed scriptural hermeneutics ...

Influence of The New Testament on the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins