Gerard Manley Hopkins
~Poetic Approach and Technique~
“All things therefore are charged with love, are charged with God and if we know how to touch them give off
sparks and take fire, yield drops and flow, ring and tell of him.”
~Gerard Manley Hopkins Notebooks
Fundamental to understanding Hopkins’s approach to poetry are two interlinking
concepts:
 Inscape: a particular creature’s1 fundamental, essential base—the aspect of it that makes it absolutely
what it is, its nature, its identity. This essential base, however, is not static but a dynamic reality, active
and “charged with God.”
 Instress: the action of recognizing a thing’s inscape, something that only humans can do. To be precise,
instress is the act of perceiving an object in its depth, perceiving its uniqueness in detail, all the way to its
particular relation with and posture toward the Creator.
The combination of these two concepts yield a vision of what Hopkins is doing in his poetry. Human beings are
in continuity with creation, having inscape of their own. But they are, yet, the most remarkable instance of
creation because of their unique ability to instress, to recognize the inscape of other creatures. Hopkins’ poems
are an example of just such a moment of instress, just such a moment of recognizing the intensity of individuality
that each thing harbors and holds for perception. In some of his pieces this kind of recognition takes on a
coloring of unconstrained brightness and ecstasy in creation (e.g. “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”); in others it results
in an intense desolation over apprehension of alienation from God and self (e.g. “I Wake and Feel the Fell of
Dark”). Engaging in this act of instress, penetrating to the roots of reality leads the human person to a deeper
encounter with Christ; so Hopkins’ poems of “instress-in-action” is redemptive both for him and for the reader
who tags along for the ride.
Capturing Instress
How does Hopkins capture his moments of instress? By using not only the meaning of words but also the sounds
of language. A familiar example might help to clarify what is at stake with the sounds of language. Recently I
saw my youngest nephew, Joshua, and witnessed this exchange:
Mother: Joshua, what does a doggie say?
Joshua: Arf! Arf!
Mother: And what does a snake say?
Joshua: SSSSS! SSSSSS!
Both of Joshua’s responses are “words” that have more to do with the sound of the words than the meaning—
they’re mimicking sounds that animals make. These kinds of words are onomatopoeias, verbal sounds that
imitate and evoke the sounds they denote (also e.g., “bang,” “poof,” and “wham”). So, when Hopkins writes his
poems, he adjusts, modifies, individuates, diversifies, calibrates each line, every syllable, to capture in the sounds
a moment of instress—a moment of poetic inspiration! Take these two lines, for example: “And all is seared with
trade; bleared, smeared with toil; / And wear’s man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil / [ . . . ]” In these
two lines the repetition and patterning of different sounds creates an audible effect, a “sound effect” that captures
this moment of instress that Hopkins felt. His poetry, then, communicates through the meaning of the words and
through the sounds! Hopkins uses a diversity of poetic techniques to execute this craft (see back).
1
The term “creature” is used intentionally and technically, denoting a thing connected to God, held in existence by God.
Hopkins Poetic Techniques
 Alliteration: the repetition of identical consonant or vowel sounds of words or in stressed syllables that
are close together—e.g. “shining from shook foil,” “dragonflies draw flame”
 Apocope: the omission of one or more sounds from a word—e.g. “Durance” (as opposed to “endurance”)
 Apostrophe: direct address to someone or some personified thing who is usually but not always present
 Coined Words: making up new words, esp. through combination of two existing words—e.g. “lionlimb,”
“wanwood”
 Ecphonema/Ecphonesis: an outcry or exclamation, sometimes indicated by “oh” or “ah,” along with an
exclamation point—e.g. “broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
 Ellipses: the omission of one or more words that are understood but must be supplied to make a
construction grammatically complete—e.g. “Deals out that being indoors [in which] each one dwells,”
“creep, / Wretch, under a comfort [that] serves in a whirlwind”
 Hyperbaton: the rearrangement, or inversion, of the expected word order in a sentence or clause—e.g.
“As tumbled over rim in roundy wells / Stones ring”
 Internal Rhymes: full rhyme within a single lines—e.g. “Bow swung finds tongue,” “steep or deep.
Here! creep"
 Metonymy: using a word to denote another concept or concepts, by virtue of habitual association—e.g.
“Why do men then now not reck his rod?”—the “rod” standing for God’s rule
 Onomatopoeia: verbal sounds that imitate and evoke the sounds they denote—e.g. “why wouldst thou
rude on me / The wring-world right foot rock?”
 Synecdoche: using a part to express the whole—e.g. “nor can foot feel, being shod”—“foot” standing for
the whole person
A Note About the Sonnet Form
Any reading of Gerard Manley Hopkins needs to include a basic understanding of the sonnet form, for many of
Hopkins’ most famous works are sonnets. The sonnet is a poetic form originating in 13th century Italy and
finding a home in the Renaissance time period in England. Extremely popular in 17 th century England, the sonnet
evolved from a genre treating earthly and carnal love into one that focused on the Christian spiritual experience,
especially in poets like John Donne and George Herbert. Gerard Manley Hopkins follows in this poetic tradition
and employs the sonnet to describe and comment on his own experience of prayer and the various aspects of the
spiritual life.
A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter (5 iambic feet—an iamb is an unstressed syllable followed
by a stressed syllable) with a rhyme scheme like: abba abba cdcd ee or abab cdcd efef gg. A key concept for
understanding the sonnet is its two-part structure, which always involves the introduction of a question or
problem or tension and then an answer or solution or resolution. The point at which the poem moves to answer
the question is called the volta (Italian for “turn”). The division of the poem is not equal; typically the volta will
occur at the 9th or the 13th line (depending on the kind of sonnet). The most important thing to remember,
however, is that the poem will more or less emphatically, more or less urgently, be presenting a quandary of some
variety and then responding to that problem. So look for problems, and look for resolutions!
Questions for Consideration in general:
1) What words or phrases in _____ poem were unclear for you? What images in _____ poem were unclear
for you? Does anyone in the group understand them? What associations do they create?
2) According to the sonnet form state the “problem” and the “solution” of this poem.
“God’s Grandeur”
1) This poem has in it just one question, “Why do men then now not reck his rod?” What purpose does it
serve?
2) This poem has multiple instances of onomatopoeia; can you name one and explain how it contributes to
the meaning?
3) What symbols of the sacraments can you identify? What do these images do to the poem?
4) What is the role of the Holy Spirit in this poem?
“As Kinfishers Catch Fire”
1) What is it that the speaker of this poem says “each mortal thing” does (notice the punctuation at the end of
line 5!)?
2) What is each thing’s “indoors”?
3) This poem has many examples of hyperbaton and of ellipses, can you identify any?
4) What is the role of Christ in this poem?
“Carrion Comfort”
1) What is the speaker’s initial temptation and what is his defense against it?
2) The speaker of this poem addresses two parties, who are they?
3) How does the speaker perceive God—what images does he use to describe God?
4) What Scriptural references can you identify?
“No Worst, there is none”
1) What does the title of the poem describe? What is it that the speaker is calling the “worst”?
2) How many voices are in this poem—what “characters” can you identify?
3) Does the main speaker in this poem receive any consolation? What is the nature of that consolation?