I don't read much poetry. Well actually given that I love Shakespeare I'm not sure that is true - his work is mostly poetry. What I should say is that I don't read or listen to much poetry that isn't spoken by a character within some scene to move a plot along. I'm not embarrassed by this - I believe that some people will concentrate on particular art forms through habit and given my life story and lifestyle I'm just not predisposed. Some people love poetry, some love opera, some love landscape paintings and I don't really love any of the three. Which isn't to say I'm not aware. I think I could tell Wordsworth from Hughes, Milton from McGough.
Most of any poetry that I've read was inevitably at school and that meant John Donne during his jack-the-lad phase and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Knowing me, I'd imagine that I would have fallen into Donne with all his lusty metaphysical verses, all relationships and stories. But for some reason I found Mr. Hopkins to have far more resonance, which is odd because his work is about praising God and nature and all the things that this city dwelling non-denominational spiritualist tends to shy away from.
But unlike much other poetry I've read, to me it's about what isn't being said, the choice of words, and the imagery being evoked which seems to suggest an underlying sadness, an understanding that whilst all of these effervescent, exciting, beautiful things exist, they will eventually end, everything will end. I'm not saying this because I'm a depressing person (I don't think), not really but it's a kind of brilliant realism, that Donne couldn't often muster and in some cases in just a few stanzas Hopkins often evokes something that Shakespeare can't convey in five acts and three hours.
If anyone has heard of Hopkins, when asked for their favourite may mention The Windhover, the bird that's really Christ. There's a magic to the way that the words and the poets experimental stress patterns somehow replicated the movement of 'daylight's dauphin' through the sky (some might remember the Kes-alike sequence in Jimmy McGovern's underrated tv series The Lakes in which the words of this poem are narrated over John Simm character taking a bird-of-prey for a flight). Sometimes Pied Beauty might get a vote with its rhythmic adjectives and painterly descriptions of trout and mole-holes and the hymnal opening and closing. The really cool choice would be God's Grandeur because it brings the pictures of his nature poems to a reminder of human endevour and (I think) our ongoing pounding of the planet which up until that point had not ruined nature which he puts down to the nestling of the Holy Spirit. But for me Spring and Fall is perfect, so much so that I named two television series that didn't happen and a fake company after it (see here).
During school I probably largely passed by the poem, just something else to learn, or something I could read out in class to try and impress Helen Back, a girl I was deeply, madly, passionately in love with. As is sometimes the way with these things, as with Shakespeare, once I left school and finally had a chance to read the poetry properly, understand and enjoy it, the words began to resonate with me. It's a very sad poem really. It's about telling a child that whilst they think they're crying about the coming of autumn and the leaves browning and falling, they're actually crying about having to grow older, because they will get older, and die. It's a harsh message, especially to pass to someone who might think that life will continue to be a long golden summer punctuated by christmases and easters, harvest festivals and leaf falls. By giving the addressee a name, Hopkins makes it personal and we are almost in Margaret's position or being reminded that we were all young once, and ignorant about what a cold, dark place the world can be. That's my dullard understanding, there's a fuller explanation here.
Most art, especially art that someone might describe as their favourite has that quality - you'll often describe it as a favourite for reasons that have nothing to do with the item itself and its true meaning. The reason that this my favourite poem is that outside of its formal qualities, and to this untrained eye it is perfect, Hopkins provides a get out clause, a positive note within the gloom. It's the title - Spring and Fall - for all Margaret's and our grief autumn leads to winter and winter leads to spring and renewal and a return to the kind of beauty evoked by Pied Beauty (although the double meaning is noted - 'spring' isn't just a season here, but its also Margaret's tears).
As I get older the poem for reasons probably beyond its real meaning keeps reminding me that nothing is over, that up until the great coat getting moment that nothing is set in stone, that actually, y'know you might think that nothing can get better and that even though your stuck in a rut and you've (sorry) entered a winter of discontent but that spring is out there waiting for you if you just believe hard enough. Although I'm in limbo right now, I've just completed a lifelong dream and anything which happens now will be amazing.
[This very special Life Props celebrates National Poetry Day 2006.]
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