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As with every year since Hopkins poems have been published, new pastiches of his work take to the air like dandelion fuzz to both procreate with other flowers and bother our nostrils. My own Hopkins period ended quite sometime ago -- the fruits of this brief flirtation with the closeted Jesuit are contained in the recently republished (or should we say, resurrected?) Gulf. This is the most successful one, and seems a fitting commentary on this blog and my views on literary "debate" -- or shall we say "grand-standing" -- which I've been both suspicious of and susceptible to since well before my thirties fat. Those of you in the know will recognize the title of this poem as that used by the poet Edward Taylor for his famous -- and very excellent! -- series of poems, written as preparations for his sermons. In fact, the Preparatory Meditations might be America's first "serial poem," and indeed it's best -- a sort of Cantos in embryo.
(And who would have thought you could buy the Preparatory Meditations at Wal-mart? Ah... they must have thought they were Preparatory MediCAtions.)
Preparatory Meditation
Here moment’s moments’ ague
like ash doth fly
temperaments
(inward spiraling fashion)
to the pit
speechifying no reconciliation with
New England’s perfidy.
The boss
of All all
forgets:
idleness a pitched & parched Winnebago gone
(& wheel carburetor spark plug) gravewards, wind’s
toy
no ballast.
The season’s seasoned savior savors
nothing like record’s recourse or
pushy preacher’s discourse
pyramiding
(peach fuzz) framed
intimately (matted)
lore’s lozenge
in cerebratory time, tuned
weakly.
Weekly
(arguing stiffly) we
gambol gambling premise or
promise
to laxity.