Michial Farmer leads David Grubbs and Nathan Gilmour in a discussion of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s six “terrible sonnets.”
Philosophy, Theology, Literature, and Other Things Human Beings Do Well
Michial Farmer leads David Grubbs and Nathan Gilmour in a discussion of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s six “terrible sonnets.”
Oftimes wonder I why the world and we
Need employ instructors tertiary English of,
As if unwitted be we when we read the word.
Ábsurd in my fancy then the edífice ivy-covered be,
And contented ought ourselves among alone
Departments of more useful arts and sciences become.
True terrible the sophistry, the casuistry of criticism phantoms
To my sense, and into engineering steer my students I.
Unfoggéd mighty, though, are my musings thus upon
By means of sunlight auditory as the episode I hear
of the sky-clear Hopkins beaming meaning-
Fully through the moot of Gilmour, Grubbs, and Farmer in my ear.
No more wonder of the worth then do I harbor of professors such,
And their stipends greater than my barber’s be, do I hope by much.