I'm Andy Patton and this is Rhyme and Reason from the Rabbit Room. Each season we look at the life and work of one poet, starting with Gerard Manley Hopkins. We're going to think about a poem today that might seem strange at first, but it's one of Hopkins most important and most beloved. If you can start to get this poem, what he's doing in the rest of his poetry can become a little clearer. This is as Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins. As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame as tumbled over rim in Roundy wells. Stone's ring, like each tucked string, tells each hung bell's bow. Swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name. Each mortal thing does one thing, and same deals out that being indoors each one dwells selves goes itself myself. It speaks in spells, crying. What I do is me. For that I came, I say more. The just man justices keeps grace that keeps all his goings, graces, acts in God's eye. What in God's eye he is Christ, for Christ plays in 10,000 places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes, not his. To the father through the features of men's faces. In this poem, Hopkins is doing a very interesting thing with the sound of the words. He was a musical poet, and he wanted his poems to be read aloud the way it sounded mattered. And in this poem he's matching the sound of the words to the thing the words are describing. I owe this insight to Abram Van Engen in his book Word Made Fresh. Van Engen points out that when Hopkins wants to talk about the bell ringing, he stretches out his vowels. You can almost hear the words gonging like a big bell, hung bow, swung tongue. And when he wants to evoke an image of a taut string being plucked. The consonants turn sharp like each tucked string tells. So there's a lot going on in the poem, at the level of the words and the rhymes and the sound of things. But what's going on in the structure? This is going to get a little technical, but this is what it takes to see what Hopkins is up to in this poem. Like many of Hopkins other poems, this is a sonnet with an eight line part followed by a six line part. The first four lines of the first stanza from As Kingfishers Catch fire to fling out broad its name, give us six images in quick succession a kingfisher, a dragonfly, a well, a stone, a string, a bell. And these images all connect in that they are things being things. The color of the kingfishers red breast Redbreast in the sun. The sound a stone makes as it falls. The clang of a bell's bow, and the next four lines pivot to comment on the first four lines to show that these images were introduced as cases in point. Examples of what he's about to say. And it's simply this what things do is what they are. And in doing what they do, they deal out or express what they are. He even anthropomorphizes them and quotes him as crying. What I do is me. For this I came. My meaning is in my action and I express my essence just by doing what I do. What I do is me. To understand what Hopkins is getting at in this poem, and how it relates to his personality and his way in the world, We have to talk about two ideas that were central to his approach to poetry and spirituality and life. And those ideas are inscape and instress. These two concepts are slightly enigmatic, but Hopkins referred to them over and over in his writing, and you can't understand what he's doing in this poem without understanding them. The poem is almost like a poetic commentary on this part of his philosophy of life. So let's start with Inscape to take a line from the poem. Inscape is basically that being indoors, each one dwells. You might think of it as a thing's thingness. Think of it as an interior landscape. And because God made the world, it turns out that everything is bigger on the inside. The inscape Hopkins saw was more vast and beautiful than it seemed on the outside, even with things we would call common birds wings, a furrowed field, a bluebell, a ferrier, a falcon riding the dawn, thermals, all of these things, and especially the people selves themselves, just by being what they are, by doing what they do. But how do you access the inscape of things? Well, by in stressing them. As a child, young Hopkins made his little brothers eat flowers so that they could really understand the flowers. And that little vignette is kind of a strange story, but it's a picture of an intuitive approach to what he would one day call instress. This childish understanding grew into a deep sense of meaning behind interacting with the world. And that isn't to say that Hopkins went around eating things to understand their essence all the time, but you can see this strain of thought in his needle, sharp and deep attention to things. The inscape, the goodness and richness God imprinted on his creation could be accessed through that attention. Here's an entry from his journal that really captures this idea. Hopkins wrote once that all things are charged with love and charged with God, and if we know how to touch them, give off sparks and take fire. Yield drops and flow ring and tell of him. And there's that key phrase if we know how to touch them. It's not automatic, even for people who believe the Christian God is the creator and the creator of the world, that we should see traces of Him in His creation. Rather, it takes work. It's something that has to be in stress. Hopkins touches on this idea in another poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, where he wrote Kiss My Hand to the dappled with damson West. Since though he is under the world. Splendor and wonder. His mystery must be in stressed, stressed. For I greet him the days I meet him and bless. When I understand he's saying that the glory is all there to be seen. After all, each thing proclaims itself and God, but his mystery has to be got at. It has to be in stressed. It's something that either strikes us forcefully in moments of great beauty or great pain, or has to become a hard won habit of observation and contemplation as we strive to greet him the days we meet him. And that is what Hopkins poetry is all about. His poems, if we instress them too, are doorways to the inscape he saw and doorways to the God he saw there. And maybe that's one reason why it didn't bother him very much. If people said they were complicated or hard to understand, the jewels weren't meant to lay on the surface for the taking. They were supposed to be buried to bring the reader to a stillness that demands attention and patience. And perhaps he wanted us to go on a journey into and through the poem, and only then would we begin to see how big they were on the inside. Look at that last stanza that Hopkins introduces by saying, I say more. He seems to pivot to the ultimate thing he finds inside everything God. Theologians have spilled oceans of ink, parsing out exactly what it means that humanity is made in the image of God. But for my money, Hopkins accomplishes more in the last six lines of this poem than any of them. He says that God has left his imprint on humanity, his image. And so his people are also images of him icons, vectors of his presence and way in the world. So that being indoors, each one dwells is ultimately Christ to Hopkins. Our graces, our just acts, all our goings, those ways we solve ourselves can become ways. Christ plays lovely in limbs, lovely in eyes, not his to the father through the features of men's faces. And now, with all that in mind, here is As Kingfishers catch fire, read by Heidi Johnston.

I'm Andy Patton and this is Rhyme and Reason from the Rabbit Room. Each season we look at the life and work of one poet, starting with Gerard Manley Hopkins. We're going to think about a poem today that might seem strange at first, but it's one of Hopkins most important and most beloved. If you can start to get this poem, what he's doing in the rest of his poetry can become a little clearer. This is as Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins. As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame as tumbled over rim in Roundy wells. Stone's ring, like each tucked string, tells each hung bell's bow. Swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name. Each mortal thing does one thing, and same deals out that being indoors each one dwells selves goes itself myself. It speaks in spells, crying. What I do is me. For that I came, I say more. The just man justices keeps grace that keeps all his goings, graces, acts in God's eye. What in God's eye he is Christ, for Christ plays in 10,000 places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes, not his. To the father through the features of men's faces. In this poem, Hopkins is doing a very interesting thing with the sound of the words. He was a musical poet, and he wanted his poems to be read aloud the way it sounded mattered. And in this poem he's matching the sound of the words to the thing the words are describing. I owe this insight to Abram Van Engen in his book Word Made Fresh. Van Engen points out that when Hopkins wants to talk about the bell ringing, he stretches out his vowels. You can almost hear the words gonging like a big bell, hung bow, swung tongue. And when he wants to evoke an image of a taut string being plucked. The consonants turn sharp like each tucked string tells. So there's a lot going on in the poem, at the level of the words and the rhymes and the sound of things. But what's going on in the structure? This is going to get a little technical, but this is what it takes to see what Hopkins is up to in this poem. Like many of Hopkins other poems, this is a sonnet with an eight line part followed by a six line part. The first four lines of the first stanza from As Kingfishers Catch fire to fling out broad its name, give us six images in quick succession a kingfisher, a dragonfly, a well, a stone, a string, a bell. And these images all connect in that they are things being things. The color of the kingfishers red breast Redbreast in the sun. The sound a stone makes as it falls. The clang of a bell's bow, and the next four lines pivot to comment on the first four lines to show that these images were introduced as cases in point. Examples of what he's about to say. And it's simply this what things do is what they are. And in doing what they do, they deal out or express what they are. He even anthropomorphizes them and quotes him as crying. What I do is me. For this I came. My meaning is in my action and I express my essence just by doing what I do. What I do is me. To understand what Hopkins is getting at in this poem, and how it relates to his personality and his way in the world, We have to talk about two ideas that were central to his approach to poetry and spirituality and life. And those ideas are inscape and instress. These two concepts are slightly enigmatic, but Hopkins referred to them over and over in his writing, and you can't understand what he's doing in this poem without understanding them. The poem is almost like a poetic commentary on this part of his philosophy of life. So let's start with Inscape to take a line from the poem. Inscape is basically that being indoors, each one dwells. You might think of it as a thing's thingness. Think of it as an interior landscape. And because God made the world, it turns out that everything is bigger on the inside. The inscape Hopkins saw was more vast and beautiful than it seemed on the outside, even with things we would call common birds wings, a furrowed field, a bluebell, a ferrier, a falcon riding the dawn, thermals, all of these things, and especially the people selves themselves, just by being what they are, by doing what they do. But how do you access the inscape of things? Well, by in stressing them. As a child, young Hopkins made his little brothers eat flowers so that they could really understand the flowers. And that little vignette is kind of a strange story, but it's a picture of an intuitive approach to what he would one day call instress. This childish understanding grew into a deep sense of meaning behind interacting with the world. And that isn't to say that Hopkins went around eating things to understand their essence all the time, but you can see this strain of thought in his needle, sharp and deep attention to things. The inscape, the goodness and richness God imprinted on his creation could be accessed through that attention. Here's an entry from his journal that really captures this idea. Hopkins wrote once that all things are charged with love and charged with God, and if we know how to touch them, give off sparks and take fire. Yield drops and flow ring and tell of him. And there's that key phrase if we know how to touch them. It's not automatic, even for people who believe the Christian God is the creator and the creator of the world, that we should see traces of Him in His creation. Rather, it takes work. It's something that has to be in stress. Hopkins touches on this idea in another poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, where he wrote Kiss My Hand to the dappled with damson West. Since though he is under the world. Splendor and wonder. His mystery must be in stressed, stressed. For I greet him the days I meet him and bless. When I understand he's saying that the glory is all there to be seen. After all, each thing proclaims itself and God, but his mystery has to be got at. It has to be in stressed. It's something that either strikes us forcefully in moments of great beauty or great pain, or has to become a hard won habit of observation and contemplation as we strive to greet him the days we meet him. And that is what Hopkins poetry is all about. His poems, if we instress them too, are doorways to the inscape he saw and doorways to the God he saw there. And maybe that's one reason why it didn't bother him very much. If people said they were complicated or hard to understand, the jewels weren't meant to lay on the surface for the taking. They were supposed to be buried to bring the reader to a stillness that demands attention and patience. And perhaps he wanted us to go on a journey into and through the poem, and only then would we begin to see how big they were on the inside. Look at that last stanza that Hopkins introduces by saying, I say more. He seems to pivot to the ultimate thing he finds inside everything God. Theologians have spilled oceans of ink, parsing out exactly what it means that humanity is made in the image of God. But for my money, Hopkins accomplishes more in the last six lines of this poem than any of them. He says that God has left his imprint on humanity, his image. And so his people are also images of him icons, vectors of his presence and way in the world. So that being indoors, each one dwells is ultimately Christ to Hopkins. Our graces, our just acts, all our goings, those ways we solve ourselves can become ways. Christ plays lovely in limbs, lovely in eyes, not his to the father through the features of men's faces. And now, with all that in mind, here is As Kingfishers catch fire, read by Heidi Johnston.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame as tumbled over rim in Roundy wells. Stone's ring Like each tucked string, tails, each hung bells bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name. Each mortal thing does one thing and the same deals out that being indoors each one dwells selves goes itself myself. It speaks and spells crying. What I do is me. For that I came. I say more the just man justices keeps grace that keeps all his goings, graces, act in God's eye. What in God's eye he is Christ, for Christ plays in 10,000 places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes. Not his to the father through the features of man's faces.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame as tumbled over rim in Roundy wells. Stone's ring Like each tucked string, tails, each hung bells bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name. Each mortal thing does one thing and the same deals out that being indoors each one dwells selves goes itself myself. It speaks and spells crying. What I do is me. For that I came. I say more the just man justices keeps grace that keeps all his goings, graces, act in God's eye. What in God's eye he is Christ, for Christ plays in 10,000 places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes. Not his to the father through the features of man's faces.

The music Christmas episode was from I Can Do It. The music from this episode was from Outside In by We Dream of Eden.

The music Christmas episode was from I Can Do It. The music from this episode was from Outside In by We Dream of Eden.

Beyond the stories by Ian Post.

Beyond the stories by Ian Post.

Beyond the stories by Ian Post.

Beyond the stories by Ian Post.

Post.

Post.

Voyager by Marshall. Music. Yes. Lifelines by Noble and Pugh.

Voyager by Marshall. Music. Yes. Lifelines by Noble and Pugh.

Land by Eville.

Land by Eville.

The sound design and editing is by Nate Shepherd. You can get more poetry from the Rabbit Room.

The sound design and editing is by Nate Shepherd. You can get more poetry from the Rabbit Room.

By subscribing to our newsletter.

By subscribing to our newsletter.

By subscribing to our newsletter.

By subscribing to our newsletter.