As Hopkins rises up the poets' ranking - he recently overtook Tennyson in one listing - it is interesting to see how defensive his fans remained just twenty years ago. Kitchen is remarkably sure-footed in handling the complex verse, though less so in such areas as the Jesuit ethos and the poet's psycho-sexual constitution. The prologue on the Oxford Movement is truly excellent and at last I understand why The Month rejected The Wreck of the Deutschland.
(Michael Fitzgerald-Lombard - bwl 45 April 2008 ) |