Failed Unions and Successful Estrangements: Finding My Queer Pandemic Desire in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Epithalamion

Abstract

Weaving between personal experience and close reading, this paper explores the sonic devices utilized by the voyeuristic speaker in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Epithalamion” poem. The paper, both creative and critical in genre, builds upon previous queer re-readings of this Hopkins’ text and ties it to the author’s contemporary concerns of queer desire and connection during the COVID-19 pandemic.