Personal Responce To Gerard Manly Hopkins

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Personal Response Hopkins was a passionate innovator.He invented a form of rhyme called "sprung rhythm".This is an intensely powerful way of expressing feelings in poetry.Phrases like "pitched past pitch of grief" literally "spring" out at the reader.This gives the line an alliterative power,in some ways akin to James Joyce's stream of consciousness approach,in that the words simply have to come out,they can not be contained. Hopkins himself said the Windhover was "the best thing I ever wrote".In describing the windhover (or bird) he paints a vivid picture for us all to "see".He sees the bird fly off "as a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow bend".Just imagine a skater at your local ice ring effortlessly skating in a beautiful smooth sweeping arc around the ring.He is comparing the beauty of this bird with the beauty and majesty of God. " I wake and feel the fell of dark" is one of Hopkins so called "terrible sonnets".That is,as a jesuit priest ( and a convert from Anglicanism) he is struggling with his faith.He dealt with extreme poverty in cities all over Britain and Ireland,and was finding it difficult to see that a merciful God could allow such pain and suffering.The "terrible" tag relates to his inner turmoil,not the poems quality. He wakes and feels the "fell" or simply, the feeling ,of darkness even though it is daytime.At the end of the poem he uses an elaborate metaphor (ie,describing two or more things without using the words "like" or "as") of baking bread,probably because he feels he's in a furnace of doubt himself.The ingredients of the "bitter taste" are very human,very earthy,not ethereal.He sees "the lost" are equally in spiritual pain,"but worse",because presumably they don't have God.In other words,Hopkins the man,is talking out loud in order to work out his personal faith issues,and ultimately these issues are explored in "No
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