Audiobook · read by volunteers
Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Robert Bridges (1844–1930) · Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
Read by Linda Leu · 19 chapters · 4 h 53
About the book
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote some of the most daring and original English poetry of the nineteenth century, and almost nobody saw it while he lived. Here are the poems as first gathered by his friend Robert Bridges: the sea-storm of The Wreck of the Deutschland, which grew out of the sinking of a ship carrying exiled nuns, and short, glowing pieces such as God's Grandeur, The Windhover and The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo. His lines crackle with new rhythms and compound words, and they were made to be spoken. The recording begins with the editor's prefaces and notes, then moves through the poems one section at a time. Linda Leu reads the whole book in about five hours, giving the dense music of the verse room to breathe. It is an invitation to hear a poet who turned landscape, faith and doubt into something startlingly physical and fresh.
Introduction
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was an English poet, educated at Oxford. He became a Roman Catholic in 1866 and entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1868, and he was ordained a priest in 1877. After joining the Jesuits he burned much of his early verse and gave up poetry for years, until the sinking of a ship in 1875 moved him to write again. Most of his best work remained unpublished in his lifetime.
The first collection appeared in 1918, edited by his friend Robert Bridges (1844-1930), who was later Poet Laureate. That is the edition recorded here, which is why the audiobook begins with Bridges's preface and his notes on the poet's own preface, where Hopkins explains his idea of rhythm. Reading these first helps the listener understand the unusual metre, which he called sprung rhythm.
The recording has 19 sections and lasts about 4.9 hours. It is read by a single LibriVox volunteer, Linda Leu. Poems are long and short, from the great shipwreck ode to nature sonnets full of birds, light and weather.
Why listen now? Hopkins is a poet who rewards the ear. His compressed, inventive language can be difficult on the page, but heard aloud it becomes music. It is an ideal way to approach a poet whom many readers find forbidding, and to discover why later writers admired him so much. If the poems seem hard at first, a good approach is to listen once without trying to analyse, letting the sound carry you, and then return to the ones that caught your attention. Hopkins wanted his verse to be read aloud and felt the ear to be its proper judge, and the audio format honours that wish.
Public domain
Robert Bridges died in 1930: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
Gerard Manley Hopkins died in 1889: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text