Unspeakable Visions: The Innovative Poetry and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Jack Kerouac

Abstract

Throughout the experiences and poetry and prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Jack Kerouac, the careful reader will see that both of the writers strove to extend the limits of their chosen art form. They worked carefully to establish their own rules for the constantly changing world of literature, creating what could be called their own chapter in the "living universe" of art culture history. Both of the men strove to emulate the rhythms they felt best expressed the world around them. Both were certain that the intellect is affected by the constant bombardment of nature and culture on one's senses; perception goes beyond mere observation and classification, to the "inscape," the "zen" of an object, an experience, an emotion. Whatever Hopkins and Kerouac came into contact with, they felt they must record and imitate perfectly the way that thing affected them. Hopkins did so with great care and constant revision, Kerouac with wild abandonment, often in a drugged trance; but both were striving to reach the same goals, to capture the sensations they felt so strongly on the page before them, to imitate nature with their poetry, to write words which sounded, not just meant. [From Conclusion]