Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Francis Joseph Thompson, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1009 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Crappy to the third power
I won't make this too painful.

"The Hound of Heaven," by Francis Thompson is an impressionistic poem describing the spiritual salvation of the author from a life of drugs, debauchery and debasement. Though inspiring and powerful to some, the poem struck me as overwrought though hyper-sincere.

Painter RH Ives Gammell spent 30 years deciding how to capture the poem on canvas, resulting in a 23-panel oeuvre displayed in this book. Gammell, fascinated by the theories of Carl Jung and by all things esoteric, painted the poem not as a tale of Christian salvation, but as the journey of the soul toward wholeness. Using the Academic painting style he championed, Gammell populated his canvases with all manner of alchemical symbolism, goddesses, pagan and Christian allusions, animals and natural elements.

Brigid M. Boardman enters the fray to detail the accomplishments of both artists and to try to explain what is going on in the paintings. Her explications -- which are as tortured and overwrought as the paintings and the poem that preceded them -- don't always make sense. Where they capture Gammell's intent, they fail to connect with any sense of symbolism comprehensible to a modern reader. And there is much that she leaves unexplained entirely.

While the paintings -- with their earnestness and studied emotionalism -- are fun to look at in their own way, it all comes down to this: "The Hound of Heaven" is a crappy interpretation of crappy paintings about a crappy poem. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

4.3 stars: Dejection and Glory
This book will make one's respect for the achievement of "The Hound of Heaven" appreciably increase.We need not be ardent admirers of Francis Thompson to sympathize with the plight of this very modern figure, torn between addiction to laudanum and love of the Transcendent.

Waldron's book sets out to do four things: (a) Provide biographical information about the poet; (b) Introduce us to his most famous poem; (c) Explicate the text, open it up, provide comparisons to other works of literature, devotional and poetic; (d) Demonstrate how most good poetry can be used as material for prayer -- the striking and famous example to which Waldron alludes is Simone Weil's "lectio divina" with George Herbert's "Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back."

Waldron turns an indulgent eye to the aesthetic flaws of "The Hound of Heaven":among them, the archaisms, accented ed's, and overuse of syntactical inversion -- poets in Wordsworth's day would have been impatient with some of Thompson's prosodical traits!And some of the comparisons are adventurous.But we certainly cannot find fault with Waldron's thorough knowledge of his subject, and the evident joy with which he writes."The Hound" is a grand metaphor which has inspired artists, writers, and inquirers into the mysteries of the Catholic faith; Waldron cites Dorothy Day, Eugene O'Neill, and the painter Ives Gammell.We might be surprised to learn that Oscar Wilde (see p. 48) had very generous things to say about Thompson's masterwork -- a surprise that is lessened when we consider the temperament of Wilde as poet in works such as "E Tenebris."

Waldron's book is teacherly without being disaffectingly didactic; it is informative and genial; it is an unhesitant apologia for poetry as a force for good, as a genitrix of hope, in even the most troubled of lives.

A proofreading note!In the sonnet found on pp 30-31 (section entitled "A Woman's Pity"), the sixth line is missing."That to my deathless progeny of pain / You should be mother," etc.

A Great Read
Great book on a great subject. Looking for more like it!

An inspirational exploration of the "Hound of Heaven"
This book, actually now available from the publisher (Pauline Books & Media, Boston) is a wonderfully presented book, both aesthetically (size, paper quality and texture, interpretive artwork by Anthony Lobosco) and incontent.

Waldron, whom I have heard speak on the subject of Poetry asPrayer, is well-grounded in the life and times of Francis Thompson andenthusiastic about his subject. Thus the HOUND OD HEAVEN comes alive forthe reader and reaches deeply into one's spiritual resevoir for silence andprayer. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Lose yourself in this novel
Waldron does a marvelous job of making the reader feel that this is a true story - the actual diary of Francis Thompson.What if: the real life story that inspired Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven" was written down in a journal somewhere?We might have a book much like this; that chronicles the horrendous pains of opium addition and the sufferings of a man who is totured by his perceived self worthelessness, but who just can not shake the reletless pursuit of the Hound of Heaven at his heels - Who never, ever gives up on him.Feeling down about yourself - or someone else? Feeling on top of the world? Fall into this short, deep novel, swim around in it a while and think.You may find yourself inspired by the novel, the poem or the truth it is based on.

The Heart of a Poet, Exposed
All earnest followers of Christ pray for virtue in the midst of a cunning world whispering sweet enticements. What must it be like to have to beg God, hour by hour, for the will to resist a siren song coming from a bottle, vial or pill in the cupboard? And how much more torturous must be such an interior war when it's fought by a sensitive soul capable of composing some of the most sublime and personal poetry ever penned by a fervent Catholic?

Francis Thompson could have told you. Best known for his poem "The Hound of Heaven," an aesthetic meditation on God's unwavering pursuit of the author's soul through life, Thompson was both deeply religious and hopelessly addicted to opium most of his adult years.

Much of Thompson's story is familiar to lovers of literature. Born in Lancashire, England, in 1859, he set out first to be a priest, then a doctor. Neither seminary nor medical school held him, however, and, after his mother died and his father evicted him, he ended up hooked and homeless on the streets of London. He attempted suicide at least once before submitting smeared and tattered samples of his writing to Merry England, a Catholic monthly magazine. The publication's editor, Wilfrid Meynell, ran two of Thompson's poems in 1888; their brilliance was confirmed by the enthusiasm they inspired in the great Victorian poet Robert Browning.

Meynell went on to befriend the bedraggled writer, nurse him through a short-lived recovery and encourage him to continue writing. The support helped: By the time Thompson died a month before his 48th birthday, he had published three books of critically praised poetry plus nearly 300 essays and book reviews.

In the late 1880s, Meynell convinced Thompson to spend some months convalescing in the quiet of an English monastery, and that's where Robert Waldron picks up the story. What if Thompson had kept a diary while living at the monastery, and what if that turned out to be the time he composed "The Hound of Heaven"?

Waldron entertains these tantalizing possibilities by employing a clever, if initially confusing, device. Billed as a novel, the book opens with a prologue explaining that Thompson did indeed keep a diary while at the monastery. He hid it beneath a loose floorboard in his cell. The author of the prologue has recovered the literary treasure and here presents it in its entirety. Both the prologue and the diary are, of course, fiction.
Why has Waldron chosen to write an imaginary diary instead of a straight biography? The answer may lie in what he accomplishes.

Like every artistic genius, but particularly those who died young after suffering unrelenting interior conflicts, Thompson inspires in many of his enthusiasts a hunger to know more of what fueled his passion. It's clear from this penetrating little exercise, easily read in one sitting, that Waldron is a serious devotee of Francis Thompson. Waldron has perceived that no amount of biographical research could uncover what it is of Thompson that he wants to bring into the light: the heart of a magnificent artist with much to teach Christians of today.

He succeeds. While this work might merely intrigue readers looking for insight into a marginally important literary figure, it will feed those who read primarily for spiritual sustenance.

Waldron's Thompson is a man desperate to prove his love despite the most abject discouragement over his own inability to change for the object of his adoration. Like any addicted Christian, he's built a long track record of broken resolutions, deaths to sin and rebirths in Christ. From such failure Waldron fashions a concise case study of the power of perseverance. Best of all, he pulls this off while avoiding didactics; the book's strength lies in its success as a character study and a story.

"I am not afraid of being alone," reads a journal entry Francis Thompson never wrote but may well have muttered to himself. "Loneliness accosted me when I was young -- and won me for life."

Later, Thompson records his humiliation upon first meeting Meynell. He's self-conscious about his filthy clothing and offensive body odor. But Meynell, he comes to realize, doesn't see a vagabond. He sees a poet.

Thanks to Waldron, so do we. "Pain, which came to man as a penalty, remains with him as a consecration; by a divine ingenuity, he is permitted to make his ignominy his exaltation," reads one journal entry. "How many among us, after repeated lessonings of experience, refuse to comprehend that there is no special love without special pain! Dear Jesus, I thank You for my cross; never permit me to forget its special weight, its power, its saving grace."

Evident in the writings Thompson did leave behind is that he was consumed by love for his Lord; his addiction severely compromised his free will, but could not extinguish his faith. Among all those after God's own heart, who doesn't carry a similarly crushing cross, even if it's not so completely crippling?

Robert Waldron has done contemporary Catholicism a fine service. He's seen to it that a world inebriated on its own sick will gets re-introduced to a forgotten, gifted poet and a suffering Christian -- a determined pilgrim who was, despite his bouts with despondence, ever prepared to give account of the hope that was in him.

David Pearson is features editor of the National Catholic Register.

Fear Wist Not to Evade, as Love Wist to Pursue
Francis Thompson, as poet and man, was beset by many frailties.Opium addiction almost drove him to despair.The "lost diary" (a very realistic novella) recounts in the first person, Thompson's rescue fromhomelessness by the eminent critic Wilfrid Meynell, and his rehabilitativeretreat in 1889 at the Norbertine abbey of Storrington.In a sparse buthandsome landscape, in an atmosphere of pure prayer, supported andencouraged by holy monks, Thompson struggles with painful memories of hisimmediate past as one of the destitute in the rain-soaked streets ofLondon. Visions of horror plague him, as does the memory of a secret guiltwhich estranges him from joy. But there are glimpses of the BeatificVision, glimpses which survive in poems that are sometimes baroque andsometimes childlike.A man who has spent a good deal of his life runningfrom God at the peril of his health, discovers he cannot outrun God, whopursues him with a relentless mercy.Poignancy, reality, and love of theDivine -- these are the hallmarks of Robert Waldron's coruscating narrativein the voice of Francis Thompson. ... Read more