Carrion Comfort by Gerard Manley Hopkins

[newsense87]

Quite stunning, beautifully read.

[planetearth42]

i am currently revising carrion comfort for my english a-level. excellent reading - charles is a great orator that (for once!) appeciates and conveys hopkins' use of sprung rhythm.

at this very moment i am remixing a drum and bass version of this poem.

[superdooperstupor]

Dear Charles,

You know the reasons why this poem and your reading of it resonate so profoundly for me.

Thank you. I hope that daylight will re-enter my life someday.

[1zangelique]

BRAVO! And thank you....

[MarasVeil]

Just as I feel at the moment... I will reserve any literary thoughts until I feel otherwise. Love to you Charles. Cathartic.

[checotahkid]

GREAT ORATOR. Thank-you for sharing this with me.

[brychar66]

my pleasure :)

[written12]

Beyond his derangements of syntax, Hopkins is such a direct, sincere, and moving poet. And his unusual phrasing is not for shock or novelty's sake- it conveys his anguish, his confusion. Also, Hopkins will use a word not as its usual part of speech, among a host of devices. Tbanks for your careful rendition.

[brychar66]

Wise words Stuart. Not the least interesting thing about this poem is that it can also be read as describing an act of love, slightly masochistic perhaps. But then God IS love and will perhaps force himself upon us should we prove reluctant. 'Batter my heart three-personed God' as Donne wrote. Chas

[sfkcbf]

A stream of consciousness and emotion with which I can identify. And how many others throughout the ages, also, have struggled with such thoughts?

[brychar66]

All thinking & feeling people I guess Stephen.

[koryargonic]

very well read! I can't say I understood the whole thing. I never fully taught myself to appreciate poetry that is all scattered and not in complete phrases. Perhaps it is a taste that will come to me with time. perhaps not. But for your performance alone, even, 5 stars!

[brychar66]

thanks Kory, I think he's describing his 'dark night of the soul' - although a devout Catholic (and a priest), Hopkins, like most of us, was distracted by the things of this world which he found hard to give up. he wrote always in that 'chopped up' (!) manner - it has been called 'sprung rhythm' -but he's really trying hard not to leave anything important out, to give the whole picture :) once you have the poem in your mind, you might find it stays there, like a tune you can't forget.

[written12]

Kory, don't despair- and don't be hard on yourself. Manley Hopkins wrote in a syntactally twisted, pretzel-like way. It does make sense, but you're not getting subjects and their matching verbs coming at you in even a semblance of the usual way. What helped me was something I read- I'll have to track it down for you- that examined the different ways he arranged his sentences. Once you can figure out what's he saying, his figures of speech and the emotion of the poems is very rich.

[Temorablue]

great as always.

[brychar66]

thanks Temora ;)