"And don't forget to fling out broad the hung bell's name to stay notified for my next video."

This is the poetic breakdown I've needed my entire life. If I had seen this in High School I would have read 879% more poetry by now

For a long time I’ve felt nothing but frustration at not just poetry, but other difficult to understand pieces of art. It felt like something that I wasn’t allowed to access because my brain just didn’t work like that; I couldn’t read a poem and see what was going on, it was just nonsense. I felt that way at the start of this video, when you first read As Kingfishers Catch Fire, but bit by bit I began to understand and really feel what the poem was saying. By the end I had decided that it was possibly one of my favorite things I’ve ever read. I’ve been a writer all my life and always wanted to be a poet - the inherent beauty of language has always appealed to me - but it was always too opaque. I can’t thank you enough for opening the door to this art form for me and I can’t wait to experience more of it!

I would totally watch a series of videos each just breaking down a poem like this! (to practice and build up confidence :) )

Thank you for both introducing me to this beautiful poem, but also giving another fantastic lesson on reading poetry in a better way. You're undoing all the damage schools have done to literature one video at a time. Keep it up

Good stuff! I wish we learned poetry like this in HS, in a way that doesn’t make it so elitist. I like individual poem analysis

Getting through Hopkin's poems as an ESL speaker is taxing the first dozen times just to get a bearing of the meaning and the sound. After that his stuff is truly magic, verily charged with the grandeur of God.

Thank you. This is the first time I've ever felt close to truly appreciating a poem.

It’s a shame schools are leaving this out, people need this, we need this …

Great video! I'm definitely showing this to my students. They come to my intro to lit class mostly disliking poetry due to poor high school instruction or thinking any poem which is not an instapoem isn't for them.

Thank you gentle sir. I wrote poetry in high school. I'm told it was good. This podcast was very helpful in understanding what poetry is. I now teach ESL to beginners. And I just started trying to write poems again.

Reading these poems which use interesting kinds of complexity to convey their meaning reminds me of listening to music from genres I'm unfamiliar with, like modern classical compositions or folk musics from other parts of the world. With some effort and time, I can (begin to) understand the structure and intention behind the art, and that brings about a level of comprehension that is really beautiful and wonderful to be a part of. But there's also a level of beauty that can be appreciated without having any clue what's happening; until you described what was going on, I was totally lost in the line "Deals out that being indoors each one dwells", but I also just loved the way it sounded. Likewise, I don't always know what's happening in a bee-bop jazz solo, but it's still pleasant to let it just kind of wash over me. Thanks for your videos! I just found your channel and I love it so far.

That was a brilliant presentation! Thank you so much. You are able to go deep while staying very clear. I'm a fan of poetry and reading in general, and have the privilege of reading in more than one language. And the enjoyment of how it sounds, beyond individual words, has always been what I love the most about poetry. It doesn't need to be super smart.

thanks for helping me understand romanticism poems but they sometimes have literal and metaphorical meanings and you made it easier for me to understand both thanks ❤

Actually, even after having read several times those 2 stanzas, I couldn't make anything out if it (that brute wrote in English, but even the English can't understand him!) and just got a headache. BUT I immediately felt the musicality in it, and since the first verse (parallelism, Kingfishers Catch Fire / Dragonflies Draw Flame), rim / roundy, etc, and then that incredible cascade of sounds in verses 4 and 5 : stones ring, indeed! Later it's getting much more quiet and "normal", as long as the sounds are concerned. So I like listening to it, and don't really care what it means, especially when looking at the personality of Hopkins : a clam frog who dedicated his life to his God and the whole mess going with it. Nothing interesting. So I'm sticking to the surface, and leave the depths to the wise men.

This is mind boggling to me! It seemed very challenging to comprehend before and suddenly it all made sense?! Very cool :D!

Thanks so much. Enjoyed poetry many years ago in school but it got too complicated later. I enjoyed the commentary and makes a poem accessible.

Well! I got the gist of it ; the video is as cool as like climbing the Mt. Everest, in my opinion. I am from India 🇮🇳. I hope your the thing that you have had explained in this video, will help me in my upcoming examination. Well whatever, I am now confident , just as fighting a lion or even a Siberian or a Royal Bengal Tiger. Thank You! Jai Hind!

A revelation! Thanks a bunch!

I’ve been wanting to learn more about William Blake, and I’ve been stumped while trying to read his poetry but your video has helped immensely! Thank you ^^

Wonderful!

What a lovely video. Your gentle explanation draws us forward, step-by-step, into a process, an understanding, and a delight - in this poem, religion and our language. I hope you make more deep dive videos into "difficult" poems. Your manner is winning.

Thank you for this presentation!

I've always wondered what it's like to "squeeze the lemonade" when it comes to close reading. This video brought me closer to that realization than I've ever been. Thank you for this!

Now that I've watched this I'm going to re-read my book of Jack Spicer poems. He so powerfully embodies the vibrant, powerful emotions of life in experiencing his poems, and yet I understand someone as technically precise and emotionally existential as Wallace Stevens far better!

i appriciate those lovely little library discards i spy behind you, even old books deserve to be loved

Wow, that's really helpful! Thanks -- what a splendid poem!

How do you know if you're reading a good or bad poem, as in technically sound or unsound? How do you know if a poem is 'bad' or just not to your taste? Whenever I pick up a book of poetry I feel like I'm going into battle: I feel frustrated and kind of accept defeat at the outset. Like I'm massively outgunned by my own stupidity. Not to mention being mocked for it by the author. I still have a long way to go. You could be my knight in shining bow tie and tweed armour. 🙏

Bravo Andrew, I feel like your friend, the skull, is a great teaching tool in itself. when he chimes in i first was alarmed by it, then after a while my brain ignores it but its still distracting. So then now i feel im more concentrated in what you are teaching and speaking. what a great tool to keep us engaged.

Glad I found your channel. Been trying to go deeper into English poetry, but for me being Swedish the language used can sometimes be very daunting... It's somewhat comforting knowing you native speakers are struggling as well 😂. I've always thought English and Swedish share a lot of similarities, but when it comes to poetic expression they are miles apart.

I loves this so much!!!!

Why has no one mentioned how funny the skull's quips are :D Also great video! Made me less intimidated by trying to read poetry and also undid some damage done in high school (where no one ever taught us how to read poems but somehow expected we would instantly know their "true meanings")

quite apart from poetry not being a thing, but an experience to be enjoyed - as apparently there are numerous learned studies that will tell that this where true enjoyment's to be found. GMH gives so much not just a whole theology but also how it feels to really hold that theory in mind so exquisitely that it can't help but echo true in the reader's mind. It occurs to me that it has the same cognitive pyromancy as Ted Hughe's 'Thought Fox'.

How can there only be 109 comments on this fantastic presentation? Thank you for analyzing so beautifully this sacred poem that means so much to you. I love it too, thanks to you.

I always thought you had to read poems using the "poetry voice" until i saw your video about just reading them in your normal voice. Totally changed how i read poems...although i still have to read Shakespeare out in a ye olde english accent to get the full effect...

i love your poetry videos! thank you

Thank you very much!

Its the spirit of the words. When taken out of context the words lose meaning. I like your understanding of poems, its the experience and connection the writer is trying to have with the reader. An art with words

This is a good video. Thanks bro. I approve of this message. The first video was like the hook, and this is the fish. I have to admit, your first video seemed specious, but with this context, it now makes a lot more sense what you were trying to say. Poetry isn't about consolidating twenty lines into one answer. It's about a conversation. Now I get where you were coming from. I like this channel, now. Despite the bad first impression it gave me, this definitely is a gem. Yeah, I'm the same way with Hopkins. He's difficult to penetrate. Though he wrote a few really good ones. Like I especially loved "God's Grandeur" as that had a very nuanced and precise meaning. But, his poetry is very utterance based, and not very meaningful. I truly get nothing out of him, still. Pwwh, Hopkins is too deep for me. You really are a good reader of poetry. Your first video is deceptive. But, this is masterful. I think I just don't like Hopkin's music... it's not really anchored to anything, and it seems esoteric at first. Like, I really don't get him at all, and don't like the sound of the poetry enough to really try to penetrate it. It doesn't hook you with anything, but like you said, is like a black veil. I like poetry that has a lot of tension and immediately brings thoughts, even if not the actual meaning of the verse. Hopkins isn't very lucid, I think is the word. You'd like my collection Fairyland. It reminisces of Hopkins' poetry. I personally don't like that style I wrote in, but if Hopkins is considered beautiful, then you're going to like Brittos and the song about wicked John. It's very much reminiscent of Hopkins'.

Thank u, this was helpful. I pray your channel grows.

I love this! Thank you!

Thank you very much for this video. I find myself drawn to poems of the Romantics like Byron, Keats and Shelley, but feel as if the deeper meaning is somehow lost on me and i am just appreciating some superficial version of it. I will try to revisit some using your method. I also find it difficult to distinguish whether poetry is “good”. What makes one good and another bad? Is me appreciating it enough for it to be good?

At 7:19 : "...that means that our first job is to begin looking for patterns or anything that can give us a clue..." " This statement contradicts the earlier statement that a poem is "not a puzzle to be figured out". The reality is that much of poetry IS a puzzle. Were it not so, we wouldn't have so many people who are curious about poetry who then turn away in frustration. I'm one of them. This video (and the previous one) makes some inspiring promises about how to experience poetry. But, I have to say that -- so far -- I'm not getting it. Not for lack of trying. But there are countless poems like this one that are either deliberately opaque or which require one to rise to a level of pretension just to pretend to know what the author meant. It's so exhausting.

This is a wonderful breakdown. It's made me want to read and write poetry myself 😅

I love your Channel sir, Your videos are really very helpful and informative. Thank you so much!!

Nice explanation sir.

thanks for making so helpful videos:)

oooh goddamit i'm so glad i stumbled upon your channel andrew! wanna be a translator, hope i'll be able to handle poetic texts better to adapt them for other languages

thanjs for sharing

More poetry teaching, please!

For G.M.H. I could feel sorry for the Grand Old Sod He did his stressful utmost to be loyal To his greatness. Gathered all he could embroil Into his verses, crush-pressed like peas in pod. But reading it I nod - I nod - I nod And all remains mish-mash - a right royal Hash of assonance alliterating. I cant uncoil Meaning from it, though not exactly mod Ern. For all this it did not pay the rent. Exclamatory prose! With purplish tinges! Though order sometimes buggery word to went; And O! Punctuation everywhere impinges! And in the end internal rhyme, sprung line, sent -Swung the poor God-botherer off his hinges.

I enjoy and appreciate your efforts in these... dare I call them lessons? As an English teacher who tried his best for 35 years to make his students experience, enjoy, read, poems rather than wring their necks (see "Schoolsville"; I know you have), I dig what you are doing here. But as this video proves, poems ARE just as much about their "meanings" as they are about their sounds and images and whatever else they're made of. Poems CAN demand reflection, exegesis, deliberation, consideration--work! Yes? "Meaning" is hard to get at. Sadly, most people have given up on poetry by the time they'd be able to get something like an idea out of it. Thanks to bricks in the wall like me. But please, keep up the good work. Thank you for it.

This is really a great video! I’m reminded of two quotes: “Most people ignore poetry because most poetry ignores most people.” ~ Adrian Mitchell “Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.” ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Begin your search where time was transcendent Crack open the books they're interdependent Lift up your eyes and look for the mark Hike to the tree that stands without bark Pass the grain tower that looks out to the west Not more than an hour you'll know by its crest Look down at your map to not wander with thirst Remember two less than on top of the first You'll know you're close where it's time to frown What points towards heaven but is upside down? Get off the road at the airplane without wings Search from the shoulder and fortune it will bring .where do i start

Definitely needed this advice when I read ee cummings. I know his work is great but I couldn't tell you why. 😅

You forgot to demonstrate the principle and proper application of the "Pritchard Scale" in measuring a poems' total greatness..😂

Really appreciated! Any recommendations on a good "book" to get to start enjoying Hopkins?

Hi there. Beautiful poem you chose there. I will search more Hopkins' poems. As kingfishers catch fire, great image. Can I make you a question?? What are your thoughts on David Jones' Anathemata....? Have you read it?

It is a whimsical poem, Kaput is also :) Rhetoric and poetry! Could there be anything better.

I’m a bit confused. In the last video I watched of yours, you explicitly say about poetry “there’s nothing to figure out.” Yet here you attempt to assist in the understanding of difficult poems, thereby helping us to “figure them out” 🤔

You’re my Poem Decoder Ring ❤

Each year, I teach students Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess.” Not sure if you’re familiar with that one, but it’s hard to resist viewing that poem as a sort of riddle because of how it almost acts as a murder mystery: the Duchess is dead, but why? You can find the answer by analyzing the tone of the speaker. I’m curious: if you were to teach a lesson on “My Last Duchess,” would you teach it exclusively with the methods you describe here or would you take an exception and allow a little bit of room for it to be a riddle?

Andrew! I wonder if you're familiar with the poetry of Aesop Rock? I'd be extremely interested in seeing you break down something of his. I think you'd really appreciate "Cycles to Gehenna"

I love your videos, good sir. And while I enjoy the quality content, I have only been wondering about that golden skull of yours. 😂

I'm sure you hear this a lot but I wish this was how I was taught in school. My English teachers did indeed teach me valuable lessons but the curriculum took much of the joy out of literature and language

I found you through your videos on Aristotles Rhetoric

The Anthony Fantano of poetry

Im about to read 'Faust', but for all the aforementioned reasons, I feel Im not skilled enough. I just finished The Divine Comedy and am working on Leaves Of Grass. Has anyone else found 'Faust' to be incomprehensible? Im almost afraid to even begin it.

In French schools, it's usual to ask the following question about a poem : "What did the poet want to tell us ?" Good grief, If the guy had wanted to communicate a specific message, he would have written an essay, not a poem. One of the main interests of the (modern) poetry is to leave the signification open, so there is not one meaning in it, but several, it depends on the reader. But it has not always been like that, look for example at that great poem of Albert Samain (French, 1858-1900), "Automne" : (....) Le vol des guêpes d’or qui vibrait sans repos S’est tu ; le pêne grince à la grille rouillée ; La tonnelle grelotte et la terre est mouillée, Et le linge blanc claque, éperdu, dans l’enclos. (...) (The flight of golden wasps that restlessy vibrated / Has gone silent ; the bolt is creaking at the rusty garden gate; The arbour is shivering and the earth is wet, And the white linen, distraught, clatters in the yard) This gives me goosebumps every time I read it, and yet it is very clear and understandable, and it exactly evokes Autumn. There of course would be a lot to say about the choice of words, the rhythm and the sounds, but anyway, this is just beautiful. Now if you compare it to modern American-style poetry, you might ask yourself... uh... did I miss something?

i wrote this please check it, i would really appreciate it 14, not 4 i am fourteen, not four, dad's hugs, now memories, a distant shore. for mom's love, no efforts implore, silent struggles, a hidden core.

How long would you spend trying to figure out if a poem is difficult to understand or just a word salad? If you already know the poet, that could inform your decision but what if all you have to go on is the one poem? Ive spent hours staring at magic eye pictures and I still don't don't know if they are a hoax or not.

What if you come from a different mother tongue and you interpret something different, because your context primes you to come up with a different interpretation?

5:40 as king fishers catch fire. so he is first describing a swamp with frogs catching fire flys and round rocks, then he goes metaphors saying how each of the creature has the prescribed place doing one thing but like cogs in a machine they are also doing the same thing, then he says the god made people to have the place in society like cogs in the machine all doing our 1 thing, and Christ is that machine being the same thing as spoken about in the swamp section, but in this case he says that the Christ is 1000 different things too because of each person relation with him that build the machine from our cogs. in this he even plays with shocking the audience in saying we are Christ. it's hard to understand because we come from a modern culture that is less a well oiled machine where people are largely not stable with a job/lifestyle/personaly to say God said he made me to just do x just be x for all my life and everyone else has a place just like me.

Pretentious. It’s just so fun to say.

❤keep up the good work

Hi any one here who can read my own poems for my you tube channel reply me please

So it’s a riddle

"casting pearls before swine" has its own functional purpose. Why not ditch that anti-riddle, i.e., dismissive reflex in opposition to a myriad of subtle discoveries: of double entendre, symbolism, nuanced literal/figurative language? While I may agree with you in part, your stance lays claim to a predominately sensitive exploratory approach. Still, it is either intellectually safe or disingenuous to reiterate that all poems are not riddles...though to ask your readership to step back into the poem as an experience, this is enobling advice. Hopkins also knew the reason why the Nazarean spoke in parables. Even the esoteric or ontological nature of His function, as the balanced attentive Christ Mind, is often lost in theological bias, conjecture or exigetical thought rather than to 'duly note' the poetic significance of mindfulness alluded to by Hopkin's highly selective, exacting language. Please note that I truly appreciate your videos.

So its about a psychotic priest who sets birds and insects on fire, because he hears his god in their desperate cries of pain?

+$0.10 for "erudition"

I think its just not for me

My Quantum Field 💘 ESP. 🔥🔥. 🩷. 🕉️ Conceptually. The bestest Poet I ever did meet. ( In all of the lifetimes since. 🔵. ) 🥁. 🎸. 💃. 👄