English Literature / Unit 14 ENL 1342 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading a Hopkins Poem
The idea
Hopkins's poems look difficult because of their sound, so read them aloud in mind and follow four steps. First, find the grammatical core beneath the compression: "I caught this morning morning's minion" means I saw this morning the falcon, the morning's darling. Second, hear the sprung rhythm: count the strong stresses, which fall close together, and let the unstressed syllables vary. Third, notice the sound devices, alliteration, internal rhyme and compound words such as "dapple-dawn-drawn," which create the thing's inscape, its distinctive pattern. Fourth, find the religious turn: nature leads to God, as the falcon to Christ or the dappled things to praise; in the terrible sonnets, the turn fails into desolation. Then state what the poem praises or laments, and how its sound enacts it.
In practice
Core grammar, stresses, sound, the turn to God.
Where people slip
Do not stop at the nature description. Hopkins's nature poems are religious poems, and the turn is the answer.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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