Hinges, Hopkins, “Buckle! AND…”

Thinking about poetry again, at long last. A colleague directed me to a lovely little online post in which poet Catherine Barnett describes her attempts to create a physical analogy of poetry as hinge: here on the University of Arizona site.

Barnett writes:

As a poet, what interests me about a hinge is its two defining qualities: a hinge—like other devices—connects objects; it serves as a point of connection, a joining, a joint. But so is glue, a screw, a nail, a hasp, a clasp, a knot, a lock. What distinguishes a hinge from most other forms of connecting is the fact that it allows relative movement between two (or more) solid objects that share an axis.

In a poem, a hinge word or moment or gesture allows you to have both continuity and gap; unity and difference; such “hinges” keep the parts of the poem in some working relationship to one another and at the same time allow the poem to retain some of what Aristotle calls the unities of time and place.

How radically or loosely you want the hinge to open is a matter of temperament.

I love that idea of temperament juxtaposed with relative movement, continuity and gap. I’ve long mulled over the concept of joinery as a metaphor for some of the things that happen in poetry (even if “poetry makes nothing happen,” I do wish people would remember Auden’s next phrase that “it survives/In the valley of its making”). The hinge offers another analogy that Barnett hints at though doesn’t fully develop in her brief piece. I felt inspired to explore a poem that I think demonstrates the concept of the hinge.

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

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-vermillion.

Aside from the fabulous alliterative sound-joy and astonishing rhythms of this poem, it offers powerful, realistic description of a bird that manages to operate symbolically if the reader chooses to interpret it that way (as Hopkins surely meant his readers to do). I propose that there are several hinges in this poem, most spectacularly the center line in the center stanza, exclamation and capitalization marking the spot. It is at this point in the poet’s observation that pride, plume, brute beauty suddenly buckle: the falcon wings fold, plunge, AND…the bird breaks into the dangerous shine that makes the viewer’s heart leap at the sight.

Perhaps there is a moment when the bird’s shape resembles a cross in the sky. Perhaps the sun behind the gleaming feathers sends out shimmers like flames, the glory of God illuminated. Or it’s just a falcon, handsome and gliding on the big wind, but that hinge in the poem’s line serves to alert us to the gap (the hinge-like action of wings an unintended simile) and the continuity of the poet’s observation.

There are other hinges that work in the piece, such as the hyphen in its odd place at the end of the first line, promising “king” but leading instead to the string of D sounds that drum through the second line; the closed hinge of “Stirred for a bird” opening wide into the surprising exclamation that hangs of the axis of a long dash “–the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!”

I’m not sure I’m going to attempt Barnett’s original idea of making a poem physically into a hinge (though I have some tantalizing thoughts about ways one could accomplish that); I hope eventually to write about the joinery analogy. Meanwhile, however, I’m spending the evening with Hopkins’ “Windhover” in my mind. A pleasant way to open, or to close, a mild day late in autumn.


5 comments on “Hinges, Hopkins, “Buckle! AND…”

  1. I should have added Gerard Manley Hopkins’ byline to the post above…I was assuming the “tag” would be enough.


  2. Sigrun says:

    I love the line:
    “How radically or loosely you want the hinge to open is a matter of temperament”.
    – even if I’m not quite sure I understand it. Will spend my day thinking about it.
    Thank you!


  3. judithar321 says:

    I’m a bit in awe — both of Hopkins’ own “achieve of; the mastery of the thing…” as he writes the poem and how he helps us envision, feel and admire those things in the falcon, whether real or symbolic.

    I am also awed by your explanation of “the hinge” which I will have to think about more, but describing, explaining such a thing is no easy task and you, too have that “mastery.”

    Finally, many thanks for helping me understand a poem I never would have read otherwise. I want more!


  4. […] a post late last year, I examined a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem for the way the lines and images might be considered as hinges. Another metaphor for how poems work–one I have been churning in my mind for a couple of […]




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