“The Windhover” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

“The Windhover” by Gerard Manley Hopkins was written in 1877 and published in 1918. Unfortunately, Hopkins was not able to see his favorite poem published as he passed away in 1889. The Windhover was written during the Victorian Era which was a time of class and prosperity as Great Britain established itself as the most powerful country in the world. During this time, Hopkins became a priest in the Catholic church and decided to dedicate this poem to Jesus Christ. The sonnet is about a bird, or a windhover, who flies with tremendous skill and speed. The windhover represents Jesus Christ as the narrator of the poem is in awe of the bird’s beauty, reflecting how Hopkins was moved by the presence of God his beautiful creation of earth and life.
The poem opens with Hopkins claiming how he was lucky to see a “morning’s minion, king-dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon,” suggesting that he was lucky enough to find Jesus in his life. This is also an alliteration that quickly draws the attention of readers. The repetition of the letter “d” at the beginning of these five words leads up to the capitalized “Falcon” adding emphasis on the importance of the windhover. This highlights how grateful he is to have found Jesus and a purpose in his life to be a part of something greater than himself. He describes how the bird was hovering in the same place before suddenly diving “off forth on swing,” which could reflect how Jesus has always been there in his life but has just recently revealed himself to Hopkins. The author uses a simile when describing the bird “as a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend” to further describe the elegance of Jesus Christ and how he smoothly moved into his life. This could also be used to describe his transition into following the Catholic church as he quickly became involved by becoming a priest. Hopkins further describes how he is in awe of Jesus’ elegance and greatness when he describes his reaction to the falcon as “the mastery of the thing!” The punctuation here shows Hopkins’ enthusiasm towards Jesus and how he is intrigued by his goodness. The next stanza opens up with a polysyndeton followed by an asyndeton that is used to describe how this falcon consists of many amazing factors which makes it so impressive. This is seen when Hopkins describes the falcon’s “Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here” as he repeats “and” twice, followed by six consecutive words separated by only commas. This sentence uses euphonious diction to make the bird sound better and support the author’s perspective on it as he has a lot of pride in this falcon. Words like “beauty,” “valor,” and “pride” hold a lot of meaning to them and are strong words which exemplifies how the author intentionally chooses words that will better help the reader visualize the falcon’s greatness. This line also tells the audience more about the origin of this poem as “valor” is spelled “valour” which is a British spelling of the word, further suggesting this poem originates in the United Kingdom. To back this up, the nest line includes words with accent marks in “shéer plód,” supporting that this poem was written a long time ago with the speaker having a British accent. The last line of the poem states, “Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.” which wraps the poem with the bird may have never been very special, but what made it so important is that is was seen in a difficult time and represented beauty in life.

“High School English Teacher” by Steve Henn

Some days you feel like a pointless taskmaster

haranguing a gang of disaffected devotees,

late bell to late bell. Some days you wonder

if anything coming out your own mouth

makes sense. Some days you don’t want

to be here at all. You’re eyeing the clock

as the minutes float by, the students schlump

out of the room. Tic . . . tic . . . you wander

too easily off topic, too uninspired with yourself

to maintain merely a bad mood, not nearly

a healthy negativity. Some days you ask

should I be doing something else?

Other days you slog through hours of two-paragraph

responses hoping for a spark in the thinking

to fire you up, to stoke a response. It doesn’t

always happen often but it happens not never

too. One day you get an email from a former

student praising you, the best teacher

he ever had, including college too. You’re happy that

he thinks the challenge your course presented

sent him crawling up a hill of language

to another level of skill. There’s nothing much

to say back about this. Thank him,

What else can you do? When you drank

a lot you might’ve seen a former student

at the bar who insisted on buying you a beer,

you might’ve listened to the boozy truth

of how they honest-to-god loved you.

Your dream is to be flown across the country,

around the world even, to read your poems

to honestly interested crowds of eager

listeners, but this is what you got instead:

about 25 faces per class period, hopeful,

or bored, or angry, or sad, somewhere else

in their heads or right here, right now,

turning the light of their young and, yes,

you know it to be true, their hopeful,

their eager faces toward you.

This poem highlights the differing days of being a high school English teacher which includes the positives and negatives of it. Henn describes how some days are boring and a struggle to get through as none of the students are listening to what is being said. This poem is relatable to students because of the connection between students and teachers. Some days at school, all you can look forward to is the end of the day. This is exemplified in the poem when Henn describes his thoughts in the class period by describing the time passing, “Tic . . . tic . . . you wander too easily off-topic” which many students relate to when they want a class to end. I think this makes the poem more interesting for the readers and appeals to a larger audience for anyone who is in a school setting, not just teachers or English teachers. Henn also describes how sometimes he gets a message from a former student praising him for being the best teacher he ever had. He describes how he is grateful for receiving this message as it elevated that student’s career. However, the tone of the poem does not make him sound passionate about receiving these messages and it seems that they really don’t mean too much to him. This can lead the reader to feel that receiving these praises is nice, but not good enough to make up for the daily, boring class periods. Henn’s tone is exemplified when in response to receiving these praises he says, “There’s nothing much to say back about this. Thank him, What else can you do?” almost like he would rather not get these messages because he does not know what to reply with. We can see the author’s larger vision in life and perhaps why getting these messages is not as exciting as you may think when Henn describes his ideal career. His preferred life is described when he says “Your dream is to be flown across the country, around the world even, to read your poems to honestly interested crowds of eager listeners…” but instead he is just a high school English teacher. This brings the poem full circle as to why he may seem disappointed in his career as traveling around the world seems a lot more intriguing than teaching kids who may not care at all about English or their education. Revealing the author’s desired career path may make a lot of people understand why he has this distasteful tone. This also may raise controversy over Henn’s attitude as some may understand why he is unsatisfied with being an English teacher at times and some may believe that he should be grateful for the students who took the time to reach out to him and he should be doing his job for the student’s benefits. I personally think he should be proud of the students he has impacted because if they were to reach out to him after college, then he must have had a major impact on their career. I do still understand his desire to read his poems across the country and world and I think he should pursue that because it will make him happier. He ends the poem by describing the situation he is in right now in his classroom with around 25 students, some who are hopeful and want to learn and some with no desire the be there at all. This shows how the current stage in his career as an English teacher is like a small scale of what he wants to do as only some students are interested in what he has to say and he wants to get to the point where he is on bigger stages where everyone is interested in what he is sharing.

“The Lesson” by Steve Henn

Once when young, I rode

my black generic BMX bike

along the bright-lit sidewalk

on a midsummer day. At the place

where the pavement ends,

supplanted by a dip into a yard-sized

field of lawngrass, a bird s*** on me

and immediately the front wheel

detached from the bike. I tumbled,

scraped, fell. Left arm and mop of hair

besh***ed, I had to ring the front door bell

at home- the door was locked.

When my sister answered I told her

what had happened and she laughed,

she laughed, and laughed. Nothing

ever happens for a reason.

Oftentimes, events from when people are younger contribute to their character later on in their lives. In “The Lesson,” Steve Henn portrays how a childhood experience taught him a greater lesson that followed him into adulthood. 

Many kids experience what seems to be the end of the world when something goes wrong. The author’s feeling of embarrassment taught him the lesson that “nothing ever happens for a reason” which contradicts the common thought that everything happens for a reason. Henn’s experience included a bird pooping on his head followed by falling off his bike due to the front wheel detaching led to his sister laughing in his face when he came back home. This led to his arm and long hair getting ruffled up which added frustration to the situation. The author uses cacophonous diction and swear words to express his frustration and passion about crashing his bike. These nasty-sounding words add emphasis to the situation and further allow the reader to envision how the author must have felt as a child. The cacophonous words in “I tumbled, scraped, fell” literally add insult to injury when the author describes what happened immediately after the bike’s front wheel detached from it. This line is also significant because it shows he had no other option but to go home because he needed to aid these injuries. This led to Henn’s embarrassment from seeing his sister because the door was locked and she had to let him in. Henn uses the repetition of “she laughed, she laughed, and laughed” to show how ridiculous he must have looked at the moment. Henn and his sister’s relationship can also be inferred here as her initial reaction to her brother being hurt was to laugh and antagonize him instead of offering help to make him feel better. This highlights how the author’s word choice helps the reader understand how this small, unfortunate event contributes to his life on a larger scale.

Many believe that everything happens for a reason, however, Steve Henn states, “Nothing ever happens for a reason.” This final statement in the poem can be interpreted in many different ways. This final line could be seen as sarcasm because this event led to a lesson so great in his life that he decided to write a poem about it. Therefore, crashing his BMX bike was really meant to happen for him because it led him to be more responsible and grow as a person. Another way this can be interpreted is in a literal sense where he does not understand why events like these have to occur in one’s life. This could be written to contribute to his frustration shown from when he was a kid and how it led to his lesson to never risk his health on impulsive actions. No matter which way this final sentence is interpreted, it serves as the most meaningful line in the poem. This is because it is the actual lesson that Henn learned and is the message the author is trying to send or the theme of the poem. The reader can infer Steve Henn is a very straightforward person because of the way he describes how he fell from his bike. He clearly describes the setting as a midsummer day on a brightly lit sidewalk which leads to why falling off his bike made him seem even more clumsy. This also describes how it would be possible for a bird to poop on his head as it is common for birds to be out in the middle of a summer day. All of these factors lead to describing the type of person Henn is because he is willing to write about an embarrassing experience of his.

Steve Henn

Steve Henn teaches high school English in northern Indiana. His previous books include Guilty Prayer (Main Street Rag, 2021) and Indiana Noble Sad Man of the Year (Wolfson, 2017). He’s proud of the children of himself and late American artist Lydia Henn. He roots for the Fighting Irish, played high school soccer, and gives poetry readings in all kinds of places, from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee to Long Beach, travel conditions and money conditions and time permitting. His most recent collection is the chapbook American Male from Main Street Rag (2022). His favorite food is crab cakes, which are also a unit of value measurement for anything in the world (this website = 37 crab cakes).