About: Every Monday, I’ll post a poem and a paragraph describing something I noticed about the poem. Anyone can add a comment describing something that they noticed about the poem. If enough people take part, then everyone can collectively notice—and appreciate—more about the poem. I’ll post a summary and synthesis of our collective comments on Friday, listing some of the most exciting things we all noticed about the poem. For more information, click here.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices; Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is — Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
The first thing we noticed is the rhythm: as Christine Rozier writes, Hopkins marks out the stressed syllables, spelling out for us how he wants the poem to be read aloud, reminding us that he wants the poem to be read aloud, to “find tongue.” Andrew Wood followed this instruction, reading the poem aloud and finding some enjoyment from the incantatory rhythm of the beautiful internal rhymes—“ring/string,” “hung/swung/tongue,” “tells/bells.” This is a poem about the beauty of the word, and it possesses that beauty in no small supply.
In its focus on the word, I can’t help but connect this poem to the capital-W Word—the logos that, in Christian belief, is both Christ and the medium of creation. In Genesis, God creates the world by speaking it into being and, importantly, declaring the world to be good; the Gospel of John starts with this strange, incantatory reflection on the Word:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
A few verses later, the Gospel reveals that the Word is Christ: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Here, then, we have some clues as to the inspiration of this poem. When Hopkins writes that “Christ plays in ten thousand places,/Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his/To the Father through the features of men’s faces,” we have a beautiful restatement of the idea from John that Christ’s “life was the light of men.”
Lisa Friedlander writes that the poem tells us that “each being—living and not—express[es] itself in some singular way, the inside spoken externally in whatever the manner of expression.” This “speaking” can be visual (the kingfisher catching fire) or aural (the rocks tumbling, the bells’ tongues speaking). But, although each thing speaks its unique name, as Lisa suggests, there seems to be a common basis or foundation for all of this speaking, as Denise S. Robbins writes—”each creature [is] a reflection of one thing saying the same thing.” As much as each thing shouts, “What I do is me,” they are also all an expression of the Word, Christ, the medium of creation, “for Christ plays in ten thousand places.” Each thing has an essence, and it speaks that essence out into a grand symphony of being, which is at its basis an expression of the sacred Word, which itself sings out in this startling and compact poem.
This brings us back to the sound of the poem, Hopkins’ own singing out. Gemma Mason writes: “The images of well, bell, and stringed instrument feel to me as if they were overlayed with one another, as if there were some single thing containing and exceeding them all.”
It’s a beautiful idea, beautifully put. See you next week.