Category Archives: poetry

Friday Ravels in Review

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For a weekly recap, I’ll start with the best: the video I made about Whole in the Wall, a street art exhibit, although I did have to correct something I said in the video by noting some great street art blogs. In second place, inspired by a discussion about Francis Bacon, I was excited to see and write about his retrospective at the Met. Then yesterday I tried to explain why the film The Queen put me off with it mix of fact and fiction.

And then a long time ago, when it was May, we touched on some Vermeer forgeries via Errol Morris’s series of articles Bamboozling Ourselves. All 7 are now published, if you want to check out the full tale. I also got on my high horse about a poetry scandal in Britain. But that was long ago in May.

Now it’s June, and so I expect the weather will cease and desist with this dreary, cold rain. I keep giving it stern glances out the window.

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Scandal to Debate: National Poetry Scene

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If you’re British, you’ve been inundated by news of the Oxford Professor of Poetry. If you’re American, you probably just yawned at the words. Perhaps if I had written the Professor of Poetry sex scandal you would have pricked up your ears (although after the Clinton scandal we might have become blase about lesser sex scandals). But poetry in Britain is a scandalous, lecherous business of machinations and ambition taken seriously by a surprising number of people.

What happened is this: Oxford University nominated esteemed poet Derek Walcott as Professor of Poetry, a largely honorary position with light lecture duties. Then allegations of sexual misconduct toward female students from 20+ years prior came to light (most notably in a book titled The Lecherous Professor). Anonymous letters about the allegation were sent to 100 Oxford faculty who would be voting on the professorship in a smear campaign. Amidst the scandal, Walcott stepped down from the candidacy. Whether these past allegations should have prevented Walcott from taking the position has become a contentious issue.

The saga continues: another candidate, Ruth Padel, was selected. A few days ago news broke that Padel had tipped journalists off to Walcott’s allegations of sexual misconduct via email, effectively forming a part of the smear campaign against her rival. Padel resigned May 25 before officially holding office (while denying misconduct), and Oxford University is again left in a lurch. Poetry can be a dirty business!

This dirty business hides a wonderful secret: Britain is experiencing a poetic Renaissance in the public consciousness. In measurable news inches (just look at the culture section of the Guardian or the Times), British people are talking about poetry in their country more than ever. Aside from scandalous poets, a fuss has also been made over their new poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, first woman and lesbian, the BBC is showing a series of programs examining poetry, and six new hardback editions of 20th century poetry have come out as part of an affordable line from Faber. Poetry is getting attention on a national level, and, if you look at comment boards, you’ll see that people honestly care about who holds the Oxford position, other candidates, and kind of role it should be.

It might be a scandal, but one that fell on receptive ears. I doubt American poets are so much more virtuous. Where are America’s poetry scandals and news inches and television programs? Why aren’t we talking about poetry?

Originally published in Blogcritics Magazine.

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poet/Priest

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I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird — the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
 Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.



Entitled The Windhover, you might, if you haven’t read Gerard Manley Hopkins before, not have seen some of the words he made up for this poem, like ‘sillion.’ The meter too is unique to Hopkins; he created his own that he called sprung rhythm. The uniqueness and innovation that characterizes his passionate verse set him aside from his contemporaries of Victorian England–it has even been said he paved the way for free verse.

He lived his life as anything but free. Hopkins (1844- 1889) was a sensitive, bright youth who did well at Oxford. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1866 and became a Jesuit priest in 1868, when he was 24 years old. This decision set the tone of his unhappy life, which was a struggle to repress his poetic and (homo?)sexual urges. Taking on the life of a Jesuit, Hopkins traveled to many part of England and finally Dublin, Ireland to teach, where he found himself friendless, unrespected, and ill at ease. These years led to his so-called terrible sonnets, which express great personal anguish.

His artistic dilemma only exacerbated his unhappiness (today we might call it manic depression), for he was a devout man. Hopkins felt that to publish his poetry would be too egoistic for a Jesuit priest, and not to publish would limit his poetic ability. He lived a divided life. He burned much of his early poetry, and stopped writing poetry later in life. Aside from a few odd periodicals, he was never published. Instead of poetry, he began to fill journals of incredible prosody and imagery, as well as wrote for more practical, religious purposes. Yet to the end of his life he remained both a devout Christian and a devoted writer. One might say of his poetry, as he writes in God’s Grandeur:

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.