"As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame " Gerard Manley Hopkins (poetry reading)

I think the poem means that it's so neat and wonderful that everything has its own special qualities and purpose, created by the engineering of God.

Voltaire ridiculed this idea saying "All's for the best in this best of all possible worlds", and pointing out how perfectly noses are designed to support spectacles. Sigmund Freud added, "and isn't it remarkable that cats have two hole in their fur exactly where their eyes are?" - although Freud was a Darwinist and on the other side of the fence and Voltaire was a nastily-clever sceptic.

But Hopkins appears to add that each man does what God has assigned him to do and in his form and features contains some aspect of Christ that God recognises.

Hopkins said "No doubt, my poetry errs on the side of oddness" and none of it was published in his lifetime. He invented a form called "sprung rhythm" in which he chooses which syllables are to be emphasised, which gives freedom from the rigidity of metre but is still wonderfully melodic, with internal rhymes, assonances and dissonaces.

If you want to hear an American Voice, here's a reading
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20757

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Entertainment

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• Kingfishers
• Dragonflies
• Hopkins

[nickidame]

Your reading of this is so... accurate and measured, it's extraordinary. Wonderfully balanced and even tempered.

Notwithstanding the dropped "swung"... it's clear (to me at least) that you understand the rhythm at a visceral level. Actually, now that I think about it... the fact that you can drop a word... and still preserve the cadence suggests that you know a thing or two about this stuff.

The video/reading I posted is an homage to Hopkins...and a counter-harmony of this poem.

[lindahogan11]

Thank you for reading this difficult poem with consummate skill. Hopkins sounds so beautiful when read aloud - but, it isn't an easy thing to do.