POETREE

Let's talk punch-drunk-awake diction -- the dicty words that unfurl the whirl and tumble-turn-twirl the sententious sentence downsideup the stoppedup topdown brain, straying away from the weighted way till they unlock the block, stock, and barrel of nature's inner nature, the instressed inscape, the flashing forth bright insight of the inner sight.

In other words, let's talk about a bird.

"Windhover" is a British dialect word for a kestral, a small falcon that hovers as it hunts -- soaring on the wind if it can, but with wingbeats if it must. And when a young novice studying for his ordination as a Jesuit priest with a penchant for the medieval philosophy of Duns Scotus saw a windhover hover and dive, it became an example of and metaphor for that flash forth of beauty in everything -- and that of God in everything.


The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

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-vermilion.


A few dangerous glosses -- minion: a favorite, an underling; dauphin: prince; rung: ascended in a spiral (a falconry term); wimpling: rippling; chevalier: knight, champion; plough: plow; sillion: a furrow; gall: to crack or chafe. "Dangerous," because if you see a double-meaning in Hopkins, you should probably understand it both ways. For example, in "dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon," the "drawn" can mean the falcon has been limned by the light OR is drawn to the light OR draws the speaker because it's lit -- or probably all of these at once. "Buckle" could be the collapse (dive) of the bird OR the attachment together of the concepts of the previous line -- or both at once, and probably more. But to get you started, those glosses shouldn't be too harmful.

Now reread that. Aloud, I mean. While you could use a recording, I strongly recommend going DIY for this. Get the feel of the words in your mouth, in your throat, in your breast. And listen for that mystic insight that a young man so struggled to express that he strained syntax and sonnet-form, using the best words he could grasp.

(For possible further reading: a guide by Ange Mlinko)

---L.