he thought that the ‘academic rage’ for Hopkins had gone too far, and that Hopkins had tried to elevate constipation to the role of a poetic muse. On top of his
critical views on the subject, Hope wrote a parody of Hopkins that expressed outright hatred. So Hope had mixed feelings at best, and perhaps any readers of Hopkins can forgive themselves for
feeling the same. But to have no feelings at all would be simply a mistake. As always, the proof is in the way the phrases stick. In the case of Hopkins they stick like burning phosphorous: there
are flashes of fire that can only be his.
LITTLE LOW HEAVENS
Any poem that does not just slide past us like all those thousands of others usually has an ignition point for our attention. To take the most startling possible example, think
of ‘Spring’, by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Everyone knows the first line because everyone knows the poem. ‘Nothing is so beautiful as Spring’ is a line that hundreds of poets
could have written, and was probably designed to sound that way: designed, that is, to be merely unexceptionable, or even flat. Only two lines further on, however, we get ‘Thrush’s eggs
look little low heavens’ and we are electrified. I can confidently say ‘we’ because nobody capable of reading poetry at all could read those few words and not feel the wattage.
Eventually we see that the complete poem is fitting, in its every part, for its task of living up to the standards of thought and perception set by that single flash of illumination.
But we wouldn’t even be checking up if we had not been put on the alert by a lightning strike of an idea that goes beyond thought and perception and into the area of metaphorical
transformation that a poem demands. A poem can do without satisfying that demand, but it had better have plenty of other qualities to make up for the omission, even if the omission is deliberate,
and really I wonder if there can be
any
successful poem, even the one disguised as an unadorned prose argument, which is not dependent on this ability to project you into a reality so
drastically rearranged that it makes your hair fizz even when it looks exactly like itself.
It’s possible that Shakespeare spoiled us. It was Shakespeare who made such dazzlements a seeming requirement, and indeed Hopkins’s picture of eggs like little low heavens might well
be attributed to Shakespeare by any practical criticism class going in cold, even if its brighter members have read enough of him to know that he hardly ever actually says that things
‘look’ like something when he says that they look like something. Considering the readiness with which Shakespeare’s metaphorical pinpoints come back to memory (‘the morn,
in russet mantle clad’ etc.), there is a temptation to identify the metaphorical pinpoint as the building block of his poetry and consequently of anybody else’s who came after him. In
my weak moments as a critic I envy the nuclear physicists of old, and would dearly like to have a few building blocks to work with: some hulking protons and electrons you could get between with a
chisel. But the criticism of a poem, to the very limited extent that it is like science at all, is much more like particle physics, in which new and smaller entities keep on proliferating the
bigger that the accelerators and colliders get. Yes, there is often at least one pinpoint metaphorical moment in any poem, but there are some successful poems without any moments at all, and there
are also, bewilderingly, moments that disintegrate their poem of residence instead of encouraging it to form a unity.
Previously I mentioned the Amy Clampitt poem with the exquisite few lines about the cheetah whose coat, when she ran, turned from a petalled garden into a sandstorm. Nobody who has ever read
that poem can possibly have forgotten the moment. But I bet that almost everybody has forgotten the poem. In the other direction, there is the moment that seems to
critical views on the subject, Hope wrote a parody of Hopkins that expressed outright hatred. So Hope had mixed feelings at best, and perhaps any readers of Hopkins can forgive themselves for
feeling the same. But to have no feelings at all would be simply a mistake. As always, the proof is in the way the phrases stick. In the case of Hopkins they stick like burning phosphorous: there
are flashes of fire that can only be his.
LITTLE LOW HEAVENS
Any poem that does not just slide past us like all those thousands of others usually has an ignition point for our attention. To take the most startling possible example, think
of ‘Spring’, by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Everyone knows the first line because everyone knows the poem. ‘Nothing is so beautiful as Spring’ is a line that hundreds of poets
could have written, and was probably designed to sound that way: designed, that is, to be merely unexceptionable, or even flat. Only two lines further on, however, we get ‘Thrush’s eggs
look little low heavens’ and we are electrified. I can confidently say ‘we’ because nobody capable of reading poetry at all could read those few words and not feel the wattage.
Eventually we see that the complete poem is fitting, in its every part, for its task of living up to the standards of thought and perception set by that single flash of illumination.
But we wouldn’t even be checking up if we had not been put on the alert by a lightning strike of an idea that goes beyond thought and perception and into the area of metaphorical
transformation that a poem demands. A poem can do without satisfying that demand, but it had better have plenty of other qualities to make up for the omission, even if the omission is deliberate,
and really I wonder if there can be
any
successful poem, even the one disguised as an unadorned prose argument, which is not dependent on this ability to project you into a reality so
drastically rearranged that it makes your hair fizz even when it looks exactly like itself.
It’s possible that Shakespeare spoiled us. It was Shakespeare who made such dazzlements a seeming requirement, and indeed Hopkins’s picture of eggs like little low heavens might well
be attributed to Shakespeare by any practical criticism class going in cold, even if its brighter members have read enough of him to know that he hardly ever actually says that things
‘look’ like something when he says that they look like something. Considering the readiness with which Shakespeare’s metaphorical pinpoints come back to memory (‘the morn,
in russet mantle clad’ etc.), there is a temptation to identify the metaphorical pinpoint as the building block of his poetry and consequently of anybody else’s who came after him. In
my weak moments as a critic I envy the nuclear physicists of old, and would dearly like to have a few building blocks to work with: some hulking protons and electrons you could get between with a
chisel. But the criticism of a poem, to the very limited extent that it is like science at all, is much more like particle physics, in which new and smaller entities keep on proliferating the
bigger that the accelerators and colliders get. Yes, there is often at least one pinpoint metaphorical moment in any poem, but there are some successful poems without any moments at all, and there
are also, bewilderingly, moments that disintegrate their poem of residence instead of encouraging it to form a unity.
Previously I mentioned the Amy Clampitt poem with the exquisite few lines about the cheetah whose coat, when she ran, turned from a petalled garden into a sandstorm. Nobody who has ever read
that poem can possibly have forgotten the moment. But I bet that almost everybody has forgotten the poem. In the other direction, there is the moment that seems to
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