Warm, personal, multi faceted, this book offers fifty-five views of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Written by poets, actors, translators, scholars, graduate students, a composer, a novelist, an artist, a theologian, and a philosopher, these essays capture the diverse enthusiasms of three generations of readers from thirteen countries in Asia, Europe, North America, and Australia.In these pages Hopkins is a healer, wordlover, birdlover, musician, truthteller, poetic influence creative theologian, naturalist, dream-figure, friend, religious teacher, Jesuit, dialogist with the Jewish midrash -- even a swimmer, a carousel-rider, a teacher of feminism, and a hope for communism-laden Poles.In a rush of reader-responses, fifty-five women and men play rousing variations on the sounds and themes of a world-beloved poet.