Option 1: Critical Essay (Set Topic)Choose one poem from the Weekly Schedule (Weeks 2-12). Which three (3) poetic techniques does it rely upon most heavily, and how do these techniques shape its meaning and impact? Remember that you must develop a specific argument. It is not enough to say (e.g.) “This poem is effective because it uses alliteration, enjambment, and refrain”; instead, you might say “Alliteration, enjambment, and refrain reveal the ways in which this poem equates sexual desire with the fear of death.”

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In "The Windhover", Gerard Manly Hopkins uses colloquialisms, alliteration and rhyme to create a unique form of devotional poetry. Hopkins was inspired partly by the Jesuit religion’s medieval alliterative religious texts and meditative practices of finding God within nature. In this poem, Hopkins adheres to the traditional love sonnet; yet his use of colloquialisms, alliteration and rhyme (while allowing him to flavour the text) takes over the sonnet’s rhythm to give the reader a sense of benevolent affability. In his letters he advocates this new rhythm as "Sprung Rhythm" to his closest acquaintances; in addition, he also annotated his poems with accents for the reader. "The Windhover" exemplifies the impact of Hopkins’ Sprung Rhythm upon the reader, which Saville calls “producing the effect of energy but constantly varied insistence that is so well realised...” (Saville 111).

From the first line, we see the beginnings of a complex and peculiar sense of visual perception, pointed out by alliteration and filled with hidden meaning, symbology and depth. The first line of "The Windhover" begins as a standard iambic pentameter with a weak/strong stress pattern, five strong stresses and ten syllables in the line "I caught this morning morning's minion, king..." (line 1). The alliteration and repetition attracts the reader, with the beginning consonant in 'morning' articulated labially (with the lips), ending with a velarial 'ing' sound articulated using the back of the tongue against the top of the throat (Fletcher and Cox 34-6). This repetition of ‘morning’ causes the reader to pause when leaping from a soft 'g' sound back to 'm'. In comparison, the following possessive 'morning's minion' is smooth and affable, with an alveolar 's' bridging the gap between the two words; thus, the reader reads aloud "this morning - morning's minion", where the minion is a minion of all mornings. However, the repetition also reads as if clarifying the first 'morning' as 'morning's minion'. Hopkins here creates the beginnings of a complex and peculiar sense of perception that takes us beyond the realms of the Romantic poet’s traditional poetic techniques. Importantly, we will see that while Hopkins’ style includes wordplay, it’s impact is strictly what we would now call devotional poetry as it seeks to impact the reader by portraying Christ as an object of desire through the love sonnet form and a metre that is suggestive of medieval alliterative literature. Particularly in The Windhover, we are seeing the love sonnet superimposed with an overlaying sense of playful rhythms representative of nature as well as Christ’s mystery.

From the second line onwards, a prosodic rhythm caused by alliteration “superimposes” over the iambic pentameter with the illusion of verse metre still being there (Fennell 325 & Pizza 55). Academics have provided unlimited descriptions in attempting to explain the superimposing Sprung Rhythm; for example, counter rhythm, (Stewart 153), counter stress (Pizza 48), medieval alliterative verse (Wimsatt 531) and eye rhyme (Hutchison 1). Many critics have felt the impact of Hopkins’ use of poetic technique as the unresolvable clash of aesthetic beauty and religious virtues.  Stewart refers to Hopkins’ rhythm as an insistent polarity concerned with differences between art and priesthood (Hatch 152). Other critics have more scathingly called it the ‘belief problem’, by essentially invalidating the use of God in poetry (Pizza 47). Even the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms states Sprung Rhythm as “peculiar”, and states Inscape and Instress as a “...not wholly successful attempt to elucidate his poetic method and religious philosophy...” which reflects that Hopkins’ originality offended and still offends critics today (Baldick 182 & 340). Both critics and poets alike suggest that Hopkins’ use of the love sonnet only reveals the poet’s inability to reconcile ascetic discipline with an aesthetic discipline.

Accentual meter continues to affect our reading when Hopkins separates 'kingdom' between lines 1 and 2, to form 'king' and 'dom'. King is a strong stress, but as a separate word 'dom' is visually a strong stress. The line intuitively begins on a strong stress, but metrically iambic pentameter begins on a weak stress, and this begins a mix of iambic pentameter and accentual meter thus creating superimposition for the reader. The beginning '...king/dom of daylight's dauphin', although logically confusing, phonetically resounds a masculine rolling confidence by the alliterating consonants. The words minion and kingdom also rhyme despite their difference in word meaning, grouping them together while the comma separates them and separating ‘kingdom’ from ’of daylight’s dauphin’. The separation of king amidst this acrobatic display gives a subtle hint that Christ could be king and no longer prince, and both at the same time.

The second line is more symmetrical, containing sixteen syllables that read as if two or three lines. The two commas this time neatly divide the phonetical spacing between groups of alliterative words and finish off with a rhyming ‘ing’ that carries on for the rest of the octet. The alliterations are also monosyllables impacting a steady, calm sing-song of adjectives culminating in 'dawn drawn'; lessening the significance of the falcon because Hopkins' accentual rhythm asks us to engage in the meaning of the alliteration and formulate meanings. Literally, the adjectives 'dawn drawn' suggest the falcon rises at dawn; or secondly, we could see a falcon drawn as a silhouette by the dawn; thirdly, an image traced out by intermittent rays that form a shape of a golden falcon; and fourthly, perhaps the sun drawn by the dawn as a carriage is drawn by a horse. Hopkins then uses alliteration to symmetrically reveal through poetic form many interpretations of Christ, superimposing imagery over the top of one another to create a sense of transmutability.

Hopkins's alliterative and colloquial euphemisms "heart in hiding" and rhyming “stirred for a bird” is further evidence of the objectification of Christ (line 8). But also of the poet as songbird, as well as mixed conservative feelings, or hiding in fear, awe and religious rapture that forces the reader to look deeper at syntax: The poet is stirred for a bird, not stirred from a bird. His heart is not hiding but in hiding, perhaps  in waiting in this case ready and prepared to stir for a bird. This challenges the reader’s assumption that this morning’s minion is the inspiration; but rather, the poet is. The poet achieves the mastery of the wind as voice, expressing hope and inspiration, urging the bird onward who rides and buffs against the big wind. The minion, the dawn, the bird are distinctive yet transmutably connected to the steady and big winds, connected by a horse’s reins that for Hopkins are a supportive feminine “wimpling wing” (line 4 Hopkins).

Hopkins’s impact upon the reader as conservative and hopeful imagery (and a transmutable superimposing and geometrical interconnecting of things) is further exemplified in his colloquial euphemising of the wind as an affirming “rolling level” and a “steady air”; a wind unlike that of Romantic poet Percy Shelley’s alliterating “west wind” in his paganistic "Ode to the West Wind". Australian poet Judith Wright draws from the The Windhover not appropriating the rolling wind but the big wind, turning it into a terrifying colonial “grey-wolf” in The Surfer (Kennedy 345). The reader’s ability to interpret the use of intertexts and appropriation is like a steady air itself with Hopkins’ dawn falcon and poet appropriating the wind as a horse or voice until the wind turns itself into a challenge that must be buffed. Fennell makes a point in Appropriating Hopkins about the importance of appropriation: "poems are not appropriated because they have become clear; rather they are clear because they have become appropriated", thus suggesting the impact not only of reading but of writing, interpreting and appropriating art as itself a rebuff that creates artistic nuance (Francis 327). As we shall see, the poet in "The Windhover" is the centre of attention, coming to understanding as he narrates watching the falcon. Hopkins' sequence of poetic devices leads the reader to a volta and the buckle and the "and" that follows it can only be explained as the connecting realization of clarity; the appropriating of voice that of brute beauty, valour and act (as air, pride, plume); the buckling of them together to achieve mastery of the wind as poet mastering voice. the metaphor is of man mastering the brute beauty of the horse; the saddle, girth and bridle with buckles (even reins have a buckle), gaining control of the constant movement of the horse (lines 9-10). Hopkins here creates multiple interpretations for the reader once again drawing in the interconnectedness of ascetic and aesthetic: a combination of nature, Christ and poet.

Aside from Hopkins' poetry is the extant collection of letters and essays, including "On the Origin of Beauty: A platonic Dialogue", which helpfully provides some context for the impact that "The Windhover" has upon readers. Even here, Hopkins’ use of colloquialisms, rhyme and alliteration impact the reader as an underlying sense of geometrical symmetry representative of his awareness of inscape. The term is Hopkins’ trait of seeing patterns that resemble nature’s symmetrical distinctive and interconnected varying sizes, shapes and lines (Stewart 165). The dialogue is an idealistic banter of intellectually stimulating ideas and the teasing back and forth between teacher and student creating a convincing rhetoric like Hopkins' poetry and the bouncing and balancing of forces as strong stresses reminiscent of previously discussed accentual meter. Hopkins’ use of form is shown in these readings intrinsically connected to his synesthetic aesthetising of mathematics in nature (Paxton 260). This allows Hopkins to engage further into scientific and geometrical forms on a deeply loving physical, devotional and intimate level.
"The Windhover" begins and ends before a split second has past, beginning with a morning and ending still with a rising sun; the beginning dawn comes into its full gold magnificence, the descriptions of sillion and gold are meant to inspire the reader the importance of work as sheer plod. There have been a variety of strangely masochistic readings in the interpretation of “blue-bleak embers”, including Saville’s interpretation as “heavy” (Saville 108). However, Hopkins objectifies Christ as a sweet companion and lover, calling Christ "my dear" and "my chevalier" (lines 11 & 13). The instant of the sun rises is a celebration of aesthetics reminiscent of "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802". Furthermore, the sky’s alliterative blue-bleak embers are more consistent with the dark night and are defeated by the falcon and sun. In addition, the illumination of the dawn (which is also the falcon) causes darkness to fall and catch fire, absorbed they gash themselves into the sun as it rises. This poetic description of darkness and sky as falling objects is typical of Hopkins’ imaginative, synesthetic descriptions similar to the falcon’s wings as reins that pull at the wind, impacting the reader as a brilliant display of transcendency. Hopkins through “The Windhover” plays with a love of nature and hypothetical questions of science, physics and metaphysics highlighted in colloquialism, alliteration and rhyme but strictly ensuring he adheres to captivating his audience with an insistently devotional poetry.

Works Cited

Baldick, Chris. Dictionary of Literary Terms. 4th Ed. Oxford University Press, United Kingdom. 2015.

Fletcher, Jane and Felicity Cox. Australian English Pronunciation and Transcription. 2nd Ed, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017.

Francis, L Fennel Jr. "Appropriating Hopkins". Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature. June 2022, Vol 57 Issue 4 p323-332 Marquette University Press, 2022, https://web-s-ebscohost-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=1b5cab9c-47f3-4d4c-8731-5d250f51085d%40redis accessed 5 October 2022.

Hatch, Laurie Camp. "Gerard Manley Hopkins and Victorian approaches to the problems of perceptions: Affirming the metaphysical in the physical". The Conference of Christiantiy and Literature 2016, Vol 65(2) 170-194, London, SAGE Publication Ltd https://journals-sagepub-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/doi/full/10.1177/0148333115585280 accessed 15 October 2022.

Hopkins, Gerald Manley. Poems and Prose. Ed W. H. Gardner, Penguin, Great Britain, 1985.

Hutchison, Hazel. Eye Rhyme: Visual Experience and the Poetics of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Victorian Poetry, Summer 2011, Vol 49, No.2, Victorian Prosody p.217-233 West Virginia University Press, 2011, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23079255, accessed 2 October 2022.

Kennedy, Sarah, “Where’s home, Ulysses?” Judith Wright in Europe 1937 Journal of Commonwealth literature, London, England: SAGE Publications 2017, Vol.52 (2), p.331-349

Pizza, Joseph. Hopkins’ Counter Stress. “Literature and Theology”, March 2011, Vol 25 No.1, Poetry and Belief, Oxford University Press, 2011, https://jstor.org/stable/23927251 accessed 2 October 2022.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Ode to the West Wind, “Poetry Foundation”, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45134/ode-to-the-west-wind accessed 3 November 2022.

Saville, Julia F. A Queer Chivalry, University Press of Virginia, Charlotsville and London, 2000.

Wordsworth, William. Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802. “Poetry Foundation” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45514/composed-upon-westminster-bridge-september-3-1802 accessed 3 November 2022.