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Article: Dark & dire.(The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Sourcebook)(Book review)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- February 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Gerard Manley Hopkins The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Sourcebook, edited by Alice Jenkins. Routledge, 174 pages, $26.95
When I was in graduate school at Boston University, I had the privilege of studying Gerard Manley Hopkins with the eminent English poet Geoffrey Hill. Hill had no patience for those critics and poets who insist on dubbing Hopkins an obscurantist. Hopkins's verse--like Hill's own--is not immediately accessible and demands much work of the reader, but that does not mean that the verse is cryptic or eccentric beyond comprehension, difficult for the mere sake of difficulty.
The reason for Hopkins's syntactical and metrical ...