This episode dives into the wonderful world of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the musicality of his language, and the vision he has of becoming what we already are.
This poem illustrates the cover of Abram Van Engen's new book, Word Made Fresh (https://a.co/d/ixArJjV). The book explores connections between poetry and faith, and it serves as an invitation to reading poetry of all kinds--with tools and tips for how to get started and explore broadly.
Special thanks to John Hendrix (https://www.johnhendrix.com/) for the cover illustration of Word Made Fresh, which is an illustration of "As Kingfishers Catch Fire."
Here is the poem by 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.
See the poem at the Poetry Foundation.
For more on Hopkins, see here (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gerard-manley-hopkins).
The last chapter of Word Made Fresh (https://a.co/d/626hzDG) dwells at length on this poem by Hopkins as an expression of what poetry does and can do in the world.
