Shook Foil in the Dust

The season of Lent begins at an interesting time, starting near the end of February, when winter is still hanging on and spring feels far away. At certain times, a hint of spring seems to come through (like when it actually rains instead of snows) but most of the time, winter seems to be far too present. It's easy, as we approach Ash Wednesday from the tail end of a cold winter, to "remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." But Lent carries with it the promise of Easter, and with it of springtime and new life. That sort of weariness and hope is reflected in the poem, "God's Grandeur," by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889, Hopkins was a Catholic Priest as well as a great poet. I don't know if this poem was written for or during Lent.)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

In my mind, it is not the message but the use of language that make this poem so brilliant and memorable. From the very beginning, the metaphors are both visual and physical: the world is "charged with the grandeur of God," as if it's about to discharge in a giant spark. And in fact, in the next line that discharge is promised, "like shining from shook foil." That image combines so many senses: the light shining of the foil is inextricably linked to the sound of the foil shaking. Combining this idea of light or a spark flaring out with a flame gives an impression of light of every form, but not particularly comforting. In fact, it's interesting that the grandeur of God is so unfriendly, so harsh and overwhelming. In line 4: "It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil, / Crushed." God is not represented by a lamb, or a cloud, but by oil oozing. And what does it mean to suggest that oil is both oozing and crushed? Somehow, the grandeur Hopkins is seeking to describe transcends the experience of the senses that he tries to describe it with.

The second part of the first stanza of the poem brings back the ideas of weariness, and of returning to dust. The repetition of "have trod, have trod, have trod" certainly brings to mind the sound of feet treading onward through its relentless repeated monosyllabicity. And everything is described as "seared," "bleared," "smeared" - dirt, grime, and weariness seem to rein, and man cannot even feel the soil (the dust to which he shall return) because he is removed from it by his shoes. The rhyme and rhythm of this stanza reinforce that immense sense of weariness. The sense of repetition and futility that is underscored by the repeated sounds and the monosyllabic words with hard, flinty consonants, like "trod," "seared," and "shod."

Hopkins offers hope, though, through the final stanza. Even as the season of Lent begins, Easter is visible at the end of it. "Nature is never spent," and spring will come again. He seems awed by this prospect, and the interjection of "ah!" in the middle of the line expresses the sheer joy with which he greets the return of "freshness" and goodness. Breaking up the form of the poem with such an interjection draws attention to the line, and to the interjection and to the phrase that follows it, "bright wings." Unlike the grandeur of God in the beginning, that is harsh and bright, the Holy Ghost is portrayed as a mother bird "brooding," who seems safe and comforting. In the final use of "bright" to describe his wings, however, Hopkins reminds us of the light and brightness that "flamed out" in the beginning of the poem. The world cannot be held in dust and weariness, but neither can it simply be comforted by nature. Instead, Hopkins ties together the poem with the harsh yet brilliant brightness of the grandeur of God that overwhelms the world as it comes out of darkness and out of the dust.

Bounded Freedom

The question of the value of form in poetry comes up frequently. Are poets constrained by writing within a strict poetic form, or do they gain freedom by not having to worry about devising their own rhyme and metrical scheme? Do rhyme and meter add value to a poem? William Wordsworth (1770-1850) takes on this issue in the sonnet "Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Walls":

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

The poem is fascinating in the way that Wordsworth expresses what seems at first a philosophical truth (rules that one chooses are not really constraining) and then twists it to apply to the question of poetic form. The choice of language he uses for his examples of those unconstrained by rules is also telling: it begins soberly, with nuns, hermits, and students, but then he suggests that maids and weavers tied to their work are "blithe and happy" and that bees that soar are also happy imprisoned in flowers. It's easy to say, applying this idea to poetry, that only "sober" or "old-fashioned" or "classic" poetry has need of form, and that while such poetry gains value from its strict form, more modern, freer poetry is unwillingly restrained by rules of rhyme and meter. Wordsworth, however, suggests that blitheness and happiness can come from the restriction of creativity to even a form as strict as a sonnet. By working within a form, the poet is freed from the pressure of devising a melodious rhythmic and rhyme scheme. The form also allows him to play with it. A sonnet, like this one, which discusses the "Sonnet's scanty plot of ground" has more credibility and self-referential irony than a free-verse poem discussing the same subject.

Free verse poetry, of course, offers more freedom in a lot of ways, and gives the author a great deal of flexibility. But writing in a form doesn't have to inherently lessen the poet's creativity. Not all great poetry has to rhyme, or scan, or follow any sort of rules, but as Wordsworth suggests, sometimes working within rules can make the vast flexibility of language more manageable. Like the bees that soar to "the highest Peak of Furness-fells," poets too can both soar to the heights of formless creativity and abide in metrical and phonetic foxglove bells.

Love and Subjectivity

I should probably start with why I'm writing this. I'm not really a chronicle-every-little-event-in-my-life-for-all-the-world-to-see kind of person. But I am a person who believes very strongly in poetry, and who thinks there's way too much good poetry out there that doesn't get seen. And I like analyzing poetry and trying to figure it out in my spare time. So this, essentially, is going to be a random selection of poems that I think are neat, probably with some commentary (highly biased and non-expert) by me.

Since it's Valentine's Day, I figured I would start with a poem about love. There are lots of poems about love out there, but one of the things I find so totally amazing about love is that you really don't love someone because of what they do. You can objectively see their flaws but not hold those against them. In Sonnet 144, Shakespeare says just that:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

This poem certainly sounds unusual. Shakespeare's not just talking about flaws, he's being really harsh in his analysis of his mistress, with her "wiry" hairs and "reeking" breath. The interesting thing doesn't seem to be that he's saying that he loves his mistress even though she's not perfect, but that in the way he's going about it, he's almost mocking the poetic conventions he's supposed to be following (and that he follows in many of the other sonnets). He says his mistress' eyes are "nothing like the sun" - a sharp rebuttal of a "standard" poetic compliment. Rather than simply not allow his mistress' eyes to be compared to the sun, he immediately rules out the possibility. Lines 3 and 4 then play with the poetic conventions of making one's love more absolute in a quality than something considered absolute, like "whiter than snow." Beginning, "if snow is white," he does not complete the thought with "her breast are whiter," but lets your expectations fall, describing her breasts as "dun." Shakespeare doesn't even bother to continue the momentum produced by the first half of the phrase with some dramatic (even if ugly) color - he simply picks the most colorless thing he knows.

Shakespeare also seems to play with the idea of whether any woman can live up to the ideals created in poetry. He comments on his own authority for the comparisons he makes, saying he "[has] seen roses damask'd" and therefore knows that his mistress' cheeks are nothing like them, but then admitting that he "never saw a goddess go." The difference in these lines is striking - roses are an everyday object, but the implicit comparison of a lover to a goddess is much closer to reality. While no one would ever really look for a woman whose cheeks looked like roses, one might expect there to be a real woman who moved gracefully like a goddess. By saying he never saw a goddess go, Shakespeare almost seems to be implying that no woman could really be compared to a goddess. He has seen roses and other concrete objects to compare his mistress to, but no real ideal woman. The last line also suggests this: while Shakespeare is affirming that he finds his mistress amazing despite her very ordinariness, he suggests that she is "as rare as any she belied with false compare." The line could easily mean that he thinks his mistress as special as any of the ladies with the traits he's been suggesting and rejecting, whom it would be a lie to compare her to. But the phrase "any she belied with false compare" also seems to suggest that any woman is misrepresented by such poetry. In that sense, Shakespeare seems less to be complaining about his own mistress, and more to be complaining about poetic dishonesty. While he sweetly implies that love does not depend on perfection in the poem, he also critically comments on the tropes of love poetry. And that's a good combination of sentiments for a Hallmark holiday.