Unconventional, sensual, avant-garde, gay — not words you’d normally associate with a Jesuit priest. Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poems were not published in his lifetime; in fact, he left strict instructions upon his death that all his work be burned. It wasn’t until 1918 that his poems reached the public eye, when poet laureate Robert Bridges published a collection he’d managed to salvage from Hopkins’ correspondence.
Yet Hopkins’ beguiling and paradoxical poems continue to yield delights, products of a poet more comparable to Seamus Heaney or the composer/lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda than to his Victorian contemporaries. Hopkins’ subject matter looks forward to Heaney’s fascination with nature both as a catalyst for writing and as a thing of beauty to be captured and celebrated. Hopkins’ avant-garde style anticipates the Hamilton writer’s hip-hop linguistic play, rhythmic patterns and tongue-twisting lines.
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