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Praise Song for Nikky Finney

from The World Is Charged: Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins

Susan Laughter Meyers
Affiliation:
South Carolina
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Summary

THIS, ALL THIS BEAUTY BLOOMING.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

She goes hatless, which is not to say

she wrongs God, which is not to say

she doesn't cover her head in His house.

Her hair is her hat, ribbons of braids.

If every hat has its occasion, she wears hers—

no feather, no floribunda rose—for liberty's sake.

Consider the braids, thick brown arguments

flowing halfway down her back,

how they weave in and out among themselves,

how they mimic her voice, warm and going somewhere

with truth-ticking cadence. The riddle of her hair

and riddle of her tongue compose a sonnet

whose subject is love, that common necessity.

Those bold, bountiful arguments: praise them.

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Information
The World is Charged
Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins
, pp. 91
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2016

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