HIP
HOPKINS
: The case for Gerard Manley Hopkins the Rapper
by
Dr. David B. Axelrod
When I offered Desmond Egan and the Festival committee my proposal of a
paper on “Hip Hopkins,” Desmond responded with his usual humor and
toleration, saying, “I’m sure you will, once again, rustle some feathers.”
Ah, sweet incongruity, that I would discuss Gerard Manley Hopkins, an
ever-so-white, Jesuit Priest, in the context of a Hip-hop and Rap culture which
is, as often, associated with lyrics that are violent, sexually explicit and,
euphemistically, rebellious. Yet, in his new book, Rhymes: The Poetics of
Hip-hop, Adam Bradley points out the connection between Hopkins’ sprung
rhythms, and Hopkins’ inventive language and rhymes, and the genre which we
call “hip-hop.”
Actually, it was my esteemed colleague, publisher and poet, Walter E.
Harris III, (aka Mankh) who first alerted me to parallels between
Hopkins
and
hip-hop. In fact, I believe Mankh was the first to explore this avenue, though
Bradley, a brilliant young critic, has a claim on the notion in print. Mankh
performed the poem, “Peace” for me and then for Desmond when he visited
Long
Island
, and it
was, every bit, a popular rap. Since then, I’ve made more of a study about
what we must acknowledge is a dynamic, and yes, literarily significant form of
poetry. Rap is one of the few immediately relevant and entertaining forms of
poetry much of
America
enjoys.
It infuses our daily life with compelling beats, inventive lines and startling
images. If that doesn’t justify its study, what else would?
Regarding
Hopkins
, his
desire to break the mold and free himself from the constraints of the formal
poetry of his time made him a genuinely iconoclastic poet. One could challenge
the wisdom of toying with and breaking from the standard sonnet, yet
Hopkins
launched
a form of his own.
I have a side story to tell that explains how it is we should allow
Hopkins
to be
called hip. I once attended the season opening concert by our own Long Island
Symphony. I was with a friend who was a versatile, popular musician and played
his own highly amplified music concerts. He complained to me that the classical
concert was just too quiet. I chided that he must be suffering from a hearing
loss after years of high-decibel music.
Sure enough, the reviews of the concert in the newspapers the next day,
also noted the lack of genuine “dynamics” in the orchestral performance.
After that, when my friend discussed music theory, I listened more carefully to
him, and here’s the point. He frequently pointed out that, if people like
Beethoven had amplifiers and drum machines and synthesizers, they would
certainly have made full use of them.
If Gerard Manley Hopkins could have met with hip-hop artists, I’m sure
he would have rapped with the best of them! He read Walt Whitman—a rebel in
his time—and identified with him, declaring “Walt Whitman’s mind to be
more like my own than any other man’s living” (Phillips 254). Move over, MC
Hammer and Emenem, here comes GMHop and all his kin. They’re going to rock
your world.
But what is it about how
Hopkins
writes,
specifically, that makes his poetry hip? It would help to define the main
attributes of hip-hop poetry (as often called “rap”). Its origins in African
and African-American poetry are well noted. I’m more interested in its actual,
functional rhythmic patterns and linguistic leaps. Stylistically, it requires a
mastery of complex metric patterns. It requires inventive application of
both close and slant rhymes and every device of alliteration, assonance
and consonance that poets have perfected.
Those of you have heard me speak on a previous occasion, or perhaps read
through one of my two previous papers, should know two things about me. First, I
am glad to be a little comic relief from the serious work many
Hopkins
scholars
present here and in on-going academic journals. But also, I do hope to raise
some alternatives to the way
Hopkins
is
viewed. I came to him knowing only what most introduction to literature students
know—that he wrote a couple well-anthologized, religious poems.
My appreciation of him continues to grow, and, coupled with the
increasing popularity of rap and my own need to constantly rethink and up-date
my views on poetry. In his book, Bradley devotes a few pages to
Hopkins
sprung
rhythms as foreshadowing, if not in fact inventing, a hip-hop tradition. I,
however, find that scansion is not a precise art. For all the technical prowess
of those who can reel off the names of English metrical feet, how we hear and
thence perform a poem is always going to be as subjective as “artistic
interpretation.”
However, it should be noted that
Hopkins
went so
far as to use diacritical marks to coach the performance of his poems. He was an
oral poet. He labored over not just emphasizing but dramatizing the words of his
poems. He was a savvy songster, actually complaining that peers like
Swinburne had a bad ear and promising that, "My own song will be a
very highly wrought will be a very finely honed work and I do hope a fine
one" (272). He goes on to praise the power of the "solo
voice" and very much in the spirit of rebellion, he declares that "art
calls for loosing, not for lacing." (272)
In that same communication with Bridges, his reference is to the
song/rap, “What shall I do for the land that bred me,” a portion of which I
reproduce here:
WHAT shall I do for the land that bred me,
Her homes and fields that folded and fed me?—
Be under her banner and live for her honor:
Under her banner I’ll live for her honor.
CHORUS. Under her banner live for her honor.
Not the pleasure, the pay, the plunder,
But country and flag, the flag I am under—
There is the shilling that finds me willing
To follow a banner and fight for honor.
CH.
We follow her banner, we fight for her honor.
Call me
England
’s fame’s fond lover,
Her fame to keep, her fame to recover.
Spend me or end me what God shall send me,
But under her banner I live for her honor.
CH.
Under her banner we march for her honor.
My friend, Jerome Rothenberg, in his introduction to his anthology, Poems
for the Millennium (Univ. of Calif. Press, 1995) makes reference to Hopkins as a
progenitor of "an art of live
performance, to the creation of a new electronic poetry (soundtext)" and
says, "Only with Whitman do we see the work turning irreversibly to free or
open rhythms—equaled, in a sometimes more radical & quirky way, by the
sprung rhythms & soundscapes (‘instress’) of Hopkins” (http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/joris/millenintro.html).
The
other impediment I’m sure that some of you might encounter with my premise
that we should sell
Hopkins
as a
hip-hop poet is, as likely, stereotypes of, mistaken impressions of the rap
movement. To answer that, I would give you Darryl DMC McDaniel’s own
definition. Darryl, one of the original members of Run DMC, is regarded as not
just an innovator of the form but an expert. He asserts that hip-hop has no
specific definition. As a changing, evolving art form, it cannot be contained in
any set of rules. Rather, as Hopkins himself wished, it seeks to keep current,
to reinvent itself to reflect the language and issues of its time.
Hopkins
abandoned poetry, was even ordered to give it up by his Jesuit superiors. Yet,
the emotions and events of his time weighed on him so greatly he felt compelled
to “declare.” The wreck of the Deutschland was so great a tragedy that he
felt compelled to commemorate it. The sorrow of even a small child was so moving
to him, he had to speak out for Margaret. His own angst was often so great, he
had to tell the world, “No Worst, there is none.” And yes, of course, he
celebrated “Pied Beauty,” in full-throated shouts.
Each attendee should endeavor to select a single poem—if not more—of
Hopkins
, and
short of complete comedy and chaos, promise to master it as a performance poem.
Take the Hip-Hopkins’ pledge that you will shout, gesture, gyrate and
articulate a
Hopkins
’ poem
for your friends, students, audiences!
Works
Cited:
Bradley,
Adam. Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip
Hop. Perseus Books:
New York
, 2009.
McDaniels,
Darryl. Lecturer.
Suffolk
College
, SUNY:
Selden
,
NY
,
April 29,
2009
.
Phillips,
Catherine. Editor. Gerard Manley Hopkins:
The Major Works.
Oxford
University
Press:
New
York
, 2002.
Rothenberg,
Jerome. Editor. Poems for the Millennium.
University
of
California
Press:
Berkley
, 1995.
