The Deep Well

Don't feel compelled to read or post a comment to the Assessment entry below. I'm just keeping track of what I feel will become something that I should have a record of, if only to reveal it for the slobbermonster that it is.

The poetry here this morning is this:

I've been writing with a pink pen to throw myself off-balance a little, or to chart a straighter course with my writing. The change in color, a color I wouldn't wear or paint my walls, brings a strange joy back to the page that has helped me get back into a regular schedule.

I've been reading some poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins recently. He was a Jesuit priest whose poems showed his reverence for and love of God. He looked at nature as particular, single tributes to God. I don't get into Godly poetry, but what I like so much about Hopkins was his play with language. He invented words, combined words, used sounds in a way that made his poems beg to be read aloud. I really like his poem The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo, for the sound and meaning - how despair leads to spare, how the repetition makes you imagine the deep well.