Tag Archives: Gerard Manley Hopkins

by Luanne | May 18, 2023 · 5:15 am

Synonym Prompt: #TankaTuesday

Colleen at Wordcraft poetry suggested we write a syllabic poem using synonyms for the word “work” and “play,” and to contrast the two for this week’s #TankaTuesday.

I have to admit that the synonym prompts are not my favorite. I prefer a little looser prompt, and this was even tighter by the need to contrast them. So go ahead and hate my poem, which is three Badger’s Hexastitch stanzas put together. I used that form because I LOVE the name. It’s like a cross between something a witch does as a hobby and the town that Loretta Lynn sings about in “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (Butcher’s Holler).

For work I used the word “toil,” because it reminded me of two of my favorite poems (see below). And for play I used “entertain” and “rest.”

To toil

seems poetic

like Hopkins and Shakespeare.*

Entertain sounds lazy

as if I should

do more.

The cat

does not toil much

except to wash himself

or hunt food if he must,

but entertains

us all.

I hope

that I can be

more like the cat than me

and rest when I need to,

toiling just as

needed.

Hopkins is the Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “God’s Grandeur,” and Shakespeare is Will himself, “Song of the Witches” from MacBeth. I loved to entertain my kids when they were little with the latter.

Here are both poems and you can see where I got “toil” from.

GOD'S GRANDEUR
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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.

###

SONG OF THE WITCHES
by William Shakespeare

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
Notes:
Macbeth: IV.i 10-19; 35-38

Source: The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (1983)

Now if you’re still reading, here’s a sonnet that I wrote based on the Hopkins poem which was published in Last Stanza Poetry Journal by editor Jenny Kalahar. After that you can see a pic of my cutie pie Meesker.

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod*
by Luanne Castle

and I am shackled to the backlit screen,
subjected to technology’s caprice,
my feet immobile, hidden, and benumbed,
my thoughts dispelled by cumbrous messages
of discounts, password problems, and a troll,
and so I scroll my Twitter notices
and scan What’s Happening, then Google God,
procrastinating still and find, alas,
my spirit drifts away, mere haze, but then
the images of light dividing clouds 
is how we see the brightest wings and warmth  
and you appear and take me by my hand 
to share the garden, smell the sweetbush, hear
the cactus wrens, and trill for butterflies.

*Title is a line from "God's Grandeur"

34 Comments

Filed under #amwriting, #poetrycommunity, #poetswithcats, #TankaTuesday, Cats and Other Animals, Poetry, Writing, Writing prompt

Tagged as #amwriting, #poetswithcats, #TankaTuesday, Badger's Hexastitch, cats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poetry, Song of the Witches, sonnet, syllabic poetry, Writing prompt

by Luanne | July 8, 2013 · 5:20 am

That’s Some Pig

From the time we learn the words abracadabra or open sesame, we know that words can be magic. When adults tell children to “say the magic word,” meaning please or thank you, children see the cause and effect of magic words.

Certain books use words in a way that work magic on us, making them live on inside us for the rest of our lives. Just thinking about these books can be magical. Robert Frost’s poetry. Jeffrey Masson’s When Elephants Weep. Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Donne. Harriet Arnow’s The Dollmaker. King Lear.

Sometimes naming even seems to work some magic on the recipient of the name. When I called my orange cat Macavity, after the T.S.Eliot master criminal cat, I might have inadvertently caused him to steal all my earrings. One of my tuxedo cat’s middle names is Jellicle Jill, and like Eliot’s Jellicle cats, she dances all night. In the morning I find her toys strewn around the house.

Even one word can resonate with magic. For me a word which reverberates with magic is radiant–and all because of E.B. White and his children’s classic Charlotte’s Web. When I first read that Charlotte spun out that word in Wilbur’s pen and saw how Wilbur lived up (key word in this sentence is “up”) to it, I could never see that word the same again. Think of Wilbur who jumps and spins in the air to prove he’s radiant. He begins to feel radiant from the inside. Then Mrs. Arable gives him a buttermilk bath, so that he looks radiant to others. But he was always radiant–he just had to find that quality within himself and act upon it.

I’ve been reminded of Wilbur every morning by the label on my new face cleanser by Burt’s Bees: Radiance. I feel akin to Wilbur, being an average Jenny like most of us are (Average Joes and Jennies) and how nice it is to try to live up to the radiance that bottle offers. Then I think of how terrific Wilbur discovered he could be, but how humble he stayed. After all, it was Charlotte’s hard work that allowed him to discover all that he could be–all that he could live up to.

When Charlotte wrote that Wilbur was some pig she was saying Wilbur really was a good soul, and that all pigs can be such. Her description of Wilbur connects back with Mrs. Arable’s comment on the very first page: “‘Some pigs were born last night.'” [my italics] All those pigs had the potential when they were born to be more than they were, just as Wilbur did.

Although it’s nice to have a good friend like Charlotte as a helper, all of us average Joes and Jennies can live up to the magic words we find in our lives. You might find yours in the Bible or in a novel or a play. You might find yours from the mouth of a friend or stranger.

As you age, you might add more and more magic words to your treasury. For me, “That’ll do, pig,” from the movie Babe layered on “some pig” in my memory bank. These words resonate with appreciation for the effort we put into our daily lives. Our hard work makes our lives glow radiantly as we try to live up to our potential.

23 Comments

Filed under Creative Nonfiction, Essay, Nonfiction, Writing

Tagged as Charlotte, Charlotte's Web, children's literature, Creative Nonfiction, Creative writing, Essay, Gerard Manley Hopkins, hard work, inspiration, John Donne, living up to your potential, magic words, Memory, Nonfiction, Robert Frost, T.S.Eliot, Wilbur, Writer, writer's inspiration, Writing memoir

by Luanne | January 31, 2013 · 5:20 am

Deviation and Beauty

The red maple up past the McKinley Elementary School playground on Emerson Street, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, is etched on the backdrop of my mind like a permanent screen saver. A symmetrical outline, the tree turned crimson every October for exactly one month.

As a kindergartener looking up the street from my Grandma’s side yard, the tree represented perfection to me. The first time I noticed it was probably when I was pushed in my stroller up the street and someone, my mother or grandmother, gave me a red leaf from the ground.

Later, Grandma ironed one under wax paper for me to keep.

When my mother worked at Checker Motors and I entered McKinley school in the morning kindergarten, I stayed with my grandparents during the days. I used to gather leaves from under the tree by myself. Each leaf, shaped like a small hand, matched my own as I picked it up and placed it in my palm.

When I looked up into the leaves, the light sparkled, dappling my view of the world around me.

Red trees stir me with their deviation from the norm, their place in the firmament of “all things counter, original, spare, strange” (Pied Beauty, Gerard Manley Hopkins) Like the passion of tender new peony shoots against a backdrop of green bushes, the red tree blazes against greenery, blue sky, or dreary human-drawn landscape.

***

On a related note, I am wondering if I am obsessed with trees. I’ve written about the palo verde, the elm, the plum, and more. If I didn’t have this paper trail of evidence leading me to the source of my obsession, I couldn’t have told you that this is one of my writing topics. I recognize my obsession with writing about family and my childhood, but I didn’t see the trees until I looked back.

In her seminal book Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg suggests:

Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can’t forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be leased.

She insists that obsessions have power. “Harness that power,” she urges.

What are your writing obsessions? If you look back at what you have written, can you identify an obsession you didn’t realize you had?

20 Comments

Filed under Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Memoir writing theory

Tagged as Creative Nonfiction, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Grandma, Kalamazoo, Memoir, Michigan, Natalie Goldberg, Pied Beauty, Tree, Writer, Writing, Writing Down the Bones, Writing memoir

by Luanne | January 24, 2013 · 5:20 am

“Small Stone” and a Poetic Mountain in a Flock of Pansies

These pansies made it through the frost last week because we protected them. With white freeze blankets, my husband and I covered as many flowers and plants as we could manage. Our yard looked as if it had been overrun by ghosts; it was worth it to save the beauties.

Today I contemplated these pansies, the star shapes inside, the concentric “circles,” the complimentary and harmonious colors, and the thin velvety feel to my fingers. Ultimately, what I wanted to say was in the Hopkins poem “Pied Beauty.” No point of saying anything else.

Pied Beauty

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Glory be to God for dappled things –

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                Praise him.