Introducing Poetry Peeks : and a first look at William Wordsworth

As many of you know, over the course of this year I’ve been reading Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.  As that exploration draws to a close, I’ve commenced to thinking (and discussing with a few of you) about who / what I should delve into next.  I couldn’t seem to decide on just one poet and as I know relatively little about poetry in general I decided that a better course of action might be to embark on a broad survey of poetry.  So . . .

Each week for an undetermined amount of time, I will be taking a peek at various poets.

I settled upon “Poetry Peeks” as the title of my ongoing feature because I do not intend for my explorations to be anything close to comprehensive.  They will quite literally be peeks into the lives and crowning achievements of selected poets.  Along the way I will be aided by Harold Bloom’s The Best Poems of the English Language, which I’m using to guide me in my selection.

My hope is to post weekly, but I can’t promise that.  I’m not going to rush through the poems just to publish once per week, so my postings will occur as I complete each little study.

I anticipate that my writings will be very much in the style of my personal commonplace book; mostly notes and things that I want to remember supplemented with my own personal remarks.

Without further ado, a first peek at . . .

William Wordsworth

I began with William Wordsworth because I read that he is considered the father of modern poetry. From what I understand Wordsworth was among the first to deviate from the lavish style and lofty diction of Victorian poetry. He believed that poetry should be accessible to the common man and should therefore be written in common language.  (I’ll come back to this thought when I comment on Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads)

Wordsworth was born in 1770 in Cumberland, England – near what is known as the Lake District.  His mother died when he was the tender age of 8, and his father followed just 5 years later.  He became not only an orphan but estranged from his beloved sister, Dorothy.  Though Wordsworth’s youth was marked by tragedy and heartache, his natural surroundings were beautiful and this had an impact on his life and came through in his poetry.  

Wordsworth had a rather unexceptional stint at Cambridge, most notably marked by a walking tour of France, Switzerland, and Italy during one of his summer vacations.  He later returned to France to live for a year during which time he fell in love with a French woman (Annette) and fathered a daughter.  With tensions rising between France and England, Wordsworth was forced to leave them behind and return to England.  The years after his return have been cited as a time of great emotional turbulence for Wordsworth.  He would not see Annette or his daughter again until 1802, an absence of nearly 10 years.

Painting by Benjamin Haydon

In 1795 Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge who would become his best friend and with whom he would compose the masterwork of Romantic poetry, Lyrical Ballads.  I began my study of Wordsworth with a reading of his famous “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads, in which he ruminates about the purpose of his work and about the meaning and pursuit of poetry in general.  I must say, this was the perfect essay to excite my interest in reading poetry.  His thoughts are so simple and eloquent.  I highly recommend a reading of this essay.  It is an essential source of insight into Wordsworth’s (and Coleridge’s) poetry but it also stands alone as it encapsulates some beautiful thoughts on the plight of the poet.

In it he states that the subsequent poems in Lyrical Ballads will be defined by the “real language of men” and “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

The following passage conveys Wordsworth’s concern for the elevation of the ordinary which seems to me to carry a hint of the anti-Romantic, or at the very least goes a step beyond the exotic sublimity of Romanticism.

“The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and at the same time, to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect;”

Other Notable Passages from the Preface

“Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and consequently, many be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated;”

“What is a Poet?  . . . He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man leased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them, to these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present;”

“Poetry is the image of man and nature.”

“The Man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude: the Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion.  Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science. “

“In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs; in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed; the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.”

“Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge–it is as immortal as the heart of man.”

Tintern Abbey

The first of Wordsworth’s poems that I read was the one known as Tintern Abbey.  (At this point, I should note that for longer poems such as this one I am not going to paste the entire text here but I’ll make every effort to link to where the poem can be read in its entirety. )  The poem was composed and published in 1798 and is written in blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter.

The subject concerns a real location, an abbey that was built in 1131 and abandoned in 1536, so Wordsworth looked upon ruins just as we would today.   The location was also a source of inspiration for Tennyson and J.M.W. Turner, among others.  Wordsworth first visited the abbey in 1793.  Five years elapsed between his first and second visits and in his poem he reflects on the “boyish days” of his first visit and the impact that the natural environment has had on him, as well as the memories and thoughts that it evokes.

He begins with a description of the landscape, making mention of the lofty cliffs and orchard tufts with their unripe fruit, the hedge rows and the trees. But he quickly reminds us that it’s not the landscape by itself that is important:

“These beauteous forms, 

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, 

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;”

I understood this to mean that Wordsworth’s memories were more emotional than visual, more sentimental than sensory.  However, even though his memories are emotional, the experience of nature in his youth was purely tactile and visual.  This contrast calls to mind thoughts on experience vs. memory.

“Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first

I came among these hills; when like a roe

I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides

Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,

Wherever nature led:”

He continues;

“The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms, were then to me

An appetite; a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,

By thought supplied, nor any interest

Unborrowed from the eye.”

From these passages I glean that the younger Wordsworth didn’t need to think lofty thoughts in order to reap joy from the natural world.  He required nothing more than the physical, tangible experience of nature.  The older Wordsworth, however, is more contemplative, nature begins to speak for him something larger, something grander, something deeper.

“For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 

The still, sad music of humanity,”

~

This is a very personal poem about a very specific and personal experience, and yet it speaks to something more universal and collective, that of experience and memory.  When we’re young we tend not to philosophize about what we encounter, we just experience it.  One might say that youth is about being in the moment and adulthood (or maturity) is about reflecting on those moments, letting them sink ever more inward, and deriving meaning from what we have seen, experienced, and heard.  For Wordsworth, this meant finding meaning in nature.

When I first read Tintern Abbey I felt an affinity with Wordsworth’s ideas and perceptions of nature but found them difficult to articulate.  I still do.  I feel the truth of what he expresses in ways that I can’t find words for.  Incidentally, I started reading Emerson the day after I finished my exploration of Wordsworth  and in his essay on Nature I came across thought after thought which seemed to coincide with Wordsworth’s notions.  He says, “all natural objects make a kindred impression when the mind is open to their influence.” Wordsworth’s meadows and woods and mountains had an influence beyond the beauty that meets the eye.

I have found that reading Emerson follows Wordsworth’s poetry perfectly.  Also fitting with the ideas in this poem, Emerson relates,

“Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind.”  

Wordsworth too connected nature with emotion.

Perhaps my lack of words isn’t so unusual as Emerson further imparts,

“We know more from nature than we can at will communicate.”

~

I’m going to break there for now.  My notes on Wordsworth have proven to be quite lengthy.  Therefore, I’ve divided my posting into what will hopefully be a more readable format.  Next, I’ll be commenting on “The Lucy Poems” followed by Resolution and Independence, Ode, and The Prelude.

As always, comments and suggestions are much appreciated.

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