God’s Grandeur, Duct Tape on My Nose, and the Supernatural
(More in the mood for music than poetry or duct tape? Please see my guest post at Porsidan.)
God's Grandeur
By G.M. Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning at the brown brink eastward springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Hopkins was a monk writing in the late 19th century. A few phrases/words need explanation: “reck” meant obey, “foil” meant sword, "trade" meant commerce, and “the ooze of oil crushed” seems to refer to the appearance of oil after being pressed from grapes or olives, I forget which.
I love how thick with sound the poem is. The music of language, with no need for accompaniment by bells, whistles, or percussion instruments, is largely missing from poetry today.
Hopkins died in his forties - early forties, as I recall. His dying request to his best friend was to destroy his writings. Hopkins felt that he had sinned by celebrating nature too much - that his focus on creation must have displeased the Creator.
Duct Tape on My Nose
By P.M. Martin
I wonder about God as Other. If existence can be divided into Creator and creation - or, for that matter, any divine entity or energy on the one hand and less sacred stuff (like duct tape) on the other - don't both still share in that all-important matter of BEING? Aren't they part of the same process?
It seems to me that the relationship between a Creator that IS and the creation that the Creator caused TO BE would be pretty tight...
I know the two are often distinguished as supernatural vs. natural, but when I anyone says "supernatural" I just hear "What does that mean?" Do we already know all the laws and bylaws of nature? The full text? With footnotes? If something happens how do we know it's not natural?
Because it's amazing? I don't know... to me a snail is amazing.
Because it happens very rarely? So then, when that asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs hit the earth, that was supernatural? Or how 'bout this: "If there were less duct tape on my nose I could smile more."
I bet nobody's typed out that sentence before. So then... have you just witnessed a supernatural miracle? (Clarification: there is no duct tape on my nose although my house is pretty much held together by duct tape...)
As Time Allows – I’m no longer able to reply to every comment and email I receive. My illness is progressive and bedridden time has gone up, so I need to focus on writing posts. But I read everything I get and sometimes take direction for my posts from comments and emails. So please keep them coming and I’ll reply as time allows.
God's Grandeur
By G.M. Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning at the brown brink eastward springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Hopkins was a monk writing in the late 19th century. A few phrases/words need explanation: “reck” meant obey, “foil” meant sword, "trade" meant commerce, and “the ooze of oil crushed” seems to refer to the appearance of oil after being pressed from grapes or olives, I forget which.
I love how thick with sound the poem is. The music of language, with no need for accompaniment by bells, whistles, or percussion instruments, is largely missing from poetry today.
Hopkins died in his forties - early forties, as I recall. His dying request to his best friend was to destroy his writings. Hopkins felt that he had sinned by celebrating nature too much - that his focus on creation must have displeased the Creator.
Duct Tape on My Nose
By P.M. Martin
I wonder about God as Other. If existence can be divided into Creator and creation - or, for that matter, any divine entity or energy on the one hand and less sacred stuff (like duct tape) on the other - don't both still share in that all-important matter of BEING? Aren't they part of the same process?
It seems to me that the relationship between a Creator that IS and the creation that the Creator caused TO BE would be pretty tight...
I know the two are often distinguished as supernatural vs. natural, but when I anyone says "supernatural" I just hear "What does that mean?" Do we already know all the laws and bylaws of nature? The full text? With footnotes? If something happens how do we know it's not natural?
Because it's amazing? I don't know... to me a snail is amazing.
Because it happens very rarely? So then, when that asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs hit the earth, that was supernatural? Or how 'bout this: "If there were less duct tape on my nose I could smile more."
I bet nobody's typed out that sentence before. So then... have you just witnessed a supernatural miracle? (Clarification: there is no duct tape on my nose although my house is pretty much held together by duct tape...)
As Time Allows – I’m no longer able to reply to every comment and email I receive. My illness is progressive and bedridden time has gone up, so I need to focus on writing posts. But I read everything I get and sometimes take direction for my posts from comments and emails. So please keep them coming and I’ll reply as time allows.
Posted by Paul at 11:24 AM Permalink
16 Comments:
I have mixed feelings about the poem. If I pull the main noun from each line, I find that the first stanza is filled with toil, oil, soil, and foil, heavy words. The second stanza is lighter: nature, freshness, lights, wings. Although it ends on a high note, the first stanza is longer and denser, giving the poem (and me) an overall heavy feeling. It's a great example of how language can resolve a problem by moving the writer from darkness to light. And I love that amazing Original Sentence you wrote!!
No.
Have I ever had duct tape on my nose?
No.
(Thinks: Does that make nasal duct tape a miracle?)
and i'll see your nose too when i see duct tape. thanks for the imagery.
Would you view me as a saint, a prophet, or just a guy with duct tape on his nose? What is your reasoning here?
but if the vagabond on my sidewalk has duct tape on his nose, i'll pretty much say he's hungry.
that's how my logic might go on this.
and ya, like gene said, i would too wonder at nature and think that someone must be behind all this creation.
and duct tape creation? some smart bugger got to inventing it before i did. no small miracle there too.
Now to you, Paul. Don't be modest about this. You're a SAINT! And you know it, duct tape or no duct tape.
Have I made my case?
Sometimes people connect the experience of nature to God and sometimes they don't.
Hopkins seems to have connected the two but in a way that left him feeling guilty about glorifying nature too much - like it detracted from his worship of the Creator...
I like the second piece. Yes the observer is the observed.
k
Why couldn't God be organic?
That is, if a creative dimension to reality exists, how do we know that he/she/it is "supernatural?"
Recently I've read texts alleging that several ancient cultures assumed we were all made of god: since god was all there was at one time, he made the universe and everything in it out of himself. I rather like that notion. It feels right to me.
Poor Hopkins, had he believed this, would have known that to worship nature is to worship god - and to die isn't punishment, but a return home.
And in a world created of and by god, there is no such thing as separation. We are all literally one, dreaming ourselves separate.
2) That second stanza takes my breath away, again. So thanks again for sharing it.
3) The deathbed scene is totally horrifying--makes me want to go slap GMH in heaven for even thinking such a terrible sacrilegious thing about God and himself. Lucky his friend had some moral fortitude. Same with V. Nabokov's son who didn't burn VN's last unfinished novel and published it instead. (Not that I'm up for reading a novel on index cards...no kidding)
4) I see the word as "super"- natural as in "higher than", relative to the physical and concrete. Higher energy vibration, maybe?
Certainly not rare or unusual. No more than the sky is more rare than the ground.
(And Hayden, you are so eloquent...)
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