The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins

From the start Hopkins’s literary champions have been puzzled, skeptical, confused, or even hostile toward his conversion. . . . Ellsberg refutes these condescending views of the poet and the church. She pays a great poet the respect of taking his core beliefs seriously. . . . The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins combines scholarly accuracy with critical acumen. Ellsberg’s extensive commentary on Hopkins’s verse and prose texts both elucidates his thought and provides illuminating context for the poems. Meanwhile she sustains her larger argument on the spiritual development of the author as a paradigmatic Catholic life of consecration, contemplation, sacrifice, and indeed sanctity. --Dana Gioia, poet laureate of California and author of Can Poetry Matter?, from the foreword Some of Hopkins finest poems are sparked by the ardor of his spiritual practices of gratitude and wonder. But inwardly the poet struggled with depression and physical weakness. Ellsberg makes the most of a mix of his poetry, letters, journal entries, and sermons to illustrate his complex life. --Spirituality & Practice I get drowsy with Descartes, nod off over Nietzsche, and am likely to keel over from Kierkegaard. But [this] was exciting. Gerard Manley Hopkins was a philosopher, and not only a philosopher but a prophet, and not only a prophet but a priest, for he saw the intimate eternal reality of all created things and called us to share the vision and knowledge that the whole world is charged with the grandeur of God. --Dwight Longenecker, The Imaginative Conservative Both timely and original.…This book will help readers meet Hopkins directly through his own words. It offers fresh insights into the great Jesuit and Catholic poet who so dearly loved God and God’s creations, and who sang of them with glee. --America Magazine Some of Hopkins’ finest poems are sparked by the ardor of his spiritual practices of gratitude and wonder. But inwardly the poet struggled with depression and physical weakness. Ellsberg makes the most of a mix of his poetry, letters, journal entries, and sermons to illustrate his complex life. --Spirituality & Practice Ellsberg is most effective in her contagious love of Hopkins’ poetry... She is a true Hopkins believer and faithfully “discharges” her devotion to the poet, whether in her celebration of “The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation”—in poems that are in effect joyful love letters to God—or, by contrast, of the desolate beauty of the poet’s bleak “winter world” (“To R.B.”). She understands so well that both moods speak to our condition, and in a startling language that is like none other in its “rehearsal/ Of own, of abrupt self” (“Henry Purcell”).--Hopkins Quarterly