As Kingfishers Catch Fire – Gerard Manley Hopkins Book Review

This little tome was number two of the Penguin Little Black Classics, and I have to say, I struggled through it a bit.

It’s not particularly long, and for the most part is a collection of poems by Hopkins, followed up by some diary extracts. Born in Essex, England in 1844 and dying in Dublin, Ireland in 1889, these poems were published posthumously by his friend Robert Bridges.

There is a sense of wonder of nature, and he goes to great lengths to describe the world around him, or elements of the world around him; attributing much to the beauty and the grace of god. His diary entries are largely Hopkins waxing lyrical about the scenes that he sees before him while travelling around his home and abroad.

The meter that he uses is difficult for me to follow, it doesn’t scan well to my eyes, or ears (I attempted to read a bunch of the poems out loud). The blurb on the book says that his poems were considered unpublishable in his lifetime and that his verse was ground-breaking and experimental. After a quick google, it turns out that he discovered a poetic rhythm called sprung rhythm.

Regardless, you get the sense as you work through the poetry, which I simply assumed was in chronological order of his writing it, that here was a man who was a deep thinker that ended up alone, somewhat bitter and sad by the end of it all.

There was a word that appeared several times that I did not know – Inscape – and I looked it up and found that, in fact, Hopkins had invented this word! It means;

The unique essence or inner nature of a person, place, thing, or event, especially depicted in poetry or a work of art.

So, even though the reading was laboured for me, I did learn a new word and enjoy various snippets of the extremely descriptive verbal paintings of his surrounds.

If you are interested in checking out the work of a Victorian-era poet that you may not have heard of before, cast your eye over some of these, I will be casting my eye over some other books in the meantime!

Like, Share, Subscribe or comment any books you might like me to put onto the reading list for 2018!

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