Friday October 18<\/p>\n
At the History of Technology Annual Meeting in Porland ME last week I got talking with a younger colleague about some of the demanding challenges of adult commitments. Somewhere in that conversation I mentioned the Jesuit Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. She asked me to send her some of his six “terrible sonnets” which take the reader into some of the terrible places of those commitments.<\/p>\n
Here’s one. Poem # 51 from GMH’s brief extant collection. “To R.B.” R.B. in the title is Robert Bridges, who in the early 20th century collected and published the first compendium of Hopkins’ poems. Bridges was poet laureate of England at the time. While Hopkins was alive (d. 1889) Bridges repeatedly demonstrated both his friendship and his lack of comprehension of Hopkins’ sprung rhythm revolution in poetic rhythm and cadence. But he kept all GMH’s poems.<\/p>\n
It’s about writer’s block experienced as mystical anguish.<\/p>\n
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844\u201389). Poems. 1918.<\/p>\n
51 To R. B.<\/strong><\/p>\n THE fine delight that fathers thought; the strong <\/p>\n Have a good weekend. May the Tigers claw back from the wall.<\/p>\n john sj<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Friday October 18 At the History of Technology Annual Meeting in Porland ME last week I got talking with a younger colleague about some of the demanding challenges of adult commitments. Somewhere in that conversation I mentioned the Jesuit Poet … Continue reading
\nSpur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,
\nBreathes once and, quench\u00e8d faster than it came,
\nLeaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.
\nNine months she then, nay years, nine years she long
\nWithin her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same:
\nThe widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim
\nNow known and hand at work now never wrong.
\nSweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
\nI want the one rapture of an inspiration.
\nO then if in my lagging lines you miss
\nThe roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,
\nMy winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss
\nNow, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.<\/p>\n