Last Sunday, we had our second summer Hopkins study with Matt and Liz. Hopkins was a late nineteenth century poet and Jesuit priest. His poetry is highly regarded, even by secular scholars, and it is in many cases very difficult. Hopkins had a wide command of language (he knew Latin, Greek, and Welsh in addition to English), and he often uses obscure words, uses secondary meanings, or uses words in unexpected ways. His poems generally tend to be about God, with a smaller number of poems that romanticize and celebrate nature. Since his poetry is so difficult, Mer and I decided to hook up with Mat and Liz so the four of us would be encouraged to read the works – plus, Matt and Liz are seriously smart people.

We had a good lunch of pizza, which we ate out on Matt and Liz’s back deck. It was really hot out, but we had some shade provided by an umbrella. After lunch, we moved out to the back yard and sat under a huge shade tree and ate brownies. We also did our poetry study there. We covered four or five poems, but left off before we covered Hopkins’ most famous work, “The Wreck of the Deutschland.” It is a long and difficult poem, so we decided to not try to cram it into a few minutes. Mer had to leave to go to the anniversary party of some family friends, but I stayed behind and chatted with Matt and Liz, which is always a good time. Liz is a lawyer and Matt has his PhD in English, so they are very interesting people, and they have a very cute toddler who is fun to watch.

After Mer and I met back up at home, we ran out to our only grad party of the weekend. This was in yet another new-to-us park. I think we are determined to see every park in northeast Ohio, but it may take us our entire career to get to them all. This was a good-sized park with a fishing pond and a fountain, and the party was set up in one of the picnic shelters. We got there on the late side of the party, so by then it was a small gathering of mostly family. The mother had put together a photo album for her daughter, so we flipped though that and chatted with the mom, and then with Jasmine, Mer’s student. We ate some cake (we were still full from our late lunch), and enjoyed the evening. We headed back home a little after 7:00.