Grateful Note: The Poetry of Hopkins for Our Spring and Fall

This morning, I'm grateful for the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins with his sounds and sights of splendid splotches of imagination and visualization in poems such as "Pied Beauty": 

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

My first encounter with Hopkins was in a college course with Dr. Gilbert Findlay at CSU, a professor who I am also grateful for, for so many reasons. Dr. Findlay's frequent go-to approach to poetry was to "stick the poem in your ear," reading it dramatically with his animated Scottish accent, and to further challenge us to "take this poem and look at it," and to often look at it again, and again. The rhythms of close reading, reader-response discussions, and more independent close reading challenges did much to coach my attention span and appreciation of poetry, poetic craft, and various and sundry poets. 

Reading the start of The ABCs of Reading, published in 1934, one might recognize the influence on Findlay by the poet Ezra Pound. By analogy, Pound promotes a similar method of reading via his account of biologist Louis Agassiz's approach to teaching students to closely examine biology specimens, in this case a sunfish. In the account, a student comes to Agassiz to learn how to master biology. The student expects much more direct coaching and guidance; however, each day, for several days, Agassiz simply directs him to look closely at the fish, leaving him for over an hour to do so and record what he notices. From that process of training his attention and his metacognition (reflectively thinking about his noticing and thinking over time), the student learns much more than the teacher could have directly conveyed. Perhaps we all need to take time to practice this method in our distracted age. At the risk of being a little reductionistic, there's also a good case to be made, with the help of neuroscience, about how this sort of attention training can develop some high-quality, healthy dopamine experiences. 

Under Findlay's tutelage, I eventually caught myself hearing and savoring the poetry and sounds of poets like John Keats and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Incidentally, several experts on reading assert that we don't actually need many strategies or techniques to learn to read well, we mostly need lots of experience reading a lot of things over time. 

Late this summer, I pulled out my copy of Hopkins' poetry and took some time to stick his poems in my ears, experiencing the ricocheting rhythms and tongue-twisting tactics of the poet as I worked at reading his poems aloud--actually, a lot more like play than work. I then discovered that The Rabbit Room just started a "Rhyme & Reason" podcast series with Hopkins' poetry as the first theme for the series on poets this year. In many of the podcasts, the presenter shares the poem ("sticks it in our ears"), provides some brief biographical and conceptual contexts for the poem, shares a thoughtful and accessible mix of explication (unfolding), and then another speaker shares another well-presented reading of the poem. 

As a side note on musical sounds, the brilliant neuroscientist and neurophilosopher Ian McGilchrist speculates that our earliest development of language as a species was likely first in the form of musical sounds. (See his excellent book The Master and His Emissary.) That seems to fit well with much of the sonic beauty and compactness of Hopkins' poetry. 

I'm fascinated by the world of stress sounds in language in general and poetry in particular. Hopkins' innovative tinkering and tossing about of sounds was too much for most of his contemporaries, and it took several decades after his death for other artists and readers to embrace his work. Along those lines, I'm grateful for the long-suffering efforts of his friend Robert Bridges to promote Hopkins' poetry. 

There are many other goodies to be found in Hopkins' poetry, including his poetic theory of "inscape" and "instress", as well as an embedded sense of spiritual exercises that fit well with contemporary concerns about mental health and well-being. I'm reluctant to focus too much on the psychology of this latter part, lest Hopkins' poetry gets hijacked by therapeutic concerns and other hang-ups about its potential usefulness. For me, at least, Hopkins if far more about the surprising wonder we can discover and rediscover about everyday things and places. In one of many instances, I find a moment of this call in his conclusion to "Penmaen Pool": 

Then come who pine for peace or pleasure
Away from counter, court, or school,
Spend here your measure of time and treasure
And taste the treats of Penmaen Pool. 

So many persons, things, and sounds to be grateful for in a world that is crammed with inscaped pleasures available for those with eyes to see and ears to hear...

Grateful Note: Bill Moyers Was (and Is) a Great Guide to Better Conversations, Relationships, and Ideas

This morning, I'm grateful for the life and work of Bill Moyers. Back in June of this year, Moyers moved on to join the Undiscovered Conversation after his earthly life ended, thereby wrapping up his life's calling of being a charitable, thoughtful, conversant journalist and all-around decent human being. 

My first encounter with Moyers was via my senior English class back in the mid 80s when our teacher showed video recordings of Moyers interviewing philosopher Mortimer Adler about Six Great Ideas (truth, goodness, beauty, liberty, equality, and justice). I was intrigued by Adler's rough and tumble approach to conversation and philosophy; I probably soaked up a little too much of that approach and attitude over the years of watching, listening to, and reading Adler. The much better influence was actually Bill Moyers, who artfully asked questions about ideas, relationships, flourishing, society, and self-development, inviting all sorts of people into conversations, questions, and relationships. Those weren't the sort of conversations I was used to at home, at school, or elsewhere in public. Although they're both good to emulate as stewards and curators of ideas, I often find myself needing to be a lot more like Moyers and a little less like Adler in terms of engaging others and ideas. (My lovely wife's cue for this has been variations on, "You might want to soften that...")

Moyers had a legendary series of interviews with mythologist Joseph Campbell: The Power of Myth, still available online and in book form. Campbell's analysis of "The Hero's Journey" (a.k.a. "The Monomyth") reveals some of the most common patterns of storytelling that various creatives throughout history and across cultures work with--or against--to produce intriguing tales, characters, and conflicts. It didn't take too much reading and study to find the limitations of some of Campbell's anthropology and Jungian assumptions, but Moyers and Campbell both helped me (and, I suspect, many others) think more imaginatively about the purpose(s) of life and the potential paths to long-term flourishing. 

I'm also grateful this morning for used bookstores, a few of which helped me reclaim copies of three of my favorite Moyers books this summer: Bill Moyers' World of Ideas, World of Ideas II, and The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets. Each of these books are packed with people, ideas, and conversations to be grateful for. 

There's also something special about books like these because they aren't available in PDF or ebook formats, something more human and down to earth, something more like Bill Moyers. At the risk of being a little nostalgic, we could use more charitable, conversant, conversational journalists these days. Perhaps, they're coming of age as part of their heroic journeys. 

So many persons, things, and ideas to be grateful for...  

Grateful Note: Many Students Really Do Want to Learn, Even in an AI Age

This morning, I'm grateful for how my three sections of English composition at our community college this semester are packed with students who want to learn. 

Despite the hysteria I sometimes hear from columnists, news commentaries, and some educators, most of my students seem interested in learning how to use AI tools responsibly for learning and writing, as well as how to work and learn well without the tools. 

Some of my students assert that "AI is evil" or that "AI has no soul." That's not a terrible way to start the semester, and I find that students who start that way typically end up being some of the wisest users of AI tools. 

I'm also grateful for discussions with many colleagues who care about teaching and learning beyond the hype and hysteria. Some are much like my suspicious students and have a strong AI-resistance stance, others are enthusiastic about teaching students to wisely use AI tools, and many are somewhere in between. 

Two books I'm grateful for are Robert Alter's The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age and Alan Jacob's The Pleasures of Reading in a Distracted Age. Following suit, I imagine another book entitled The Pleasures of Teaching and Learning in an AI Age. 

So many persons and things to be grateful for...