While searching for a picture of William Wordsworth, I came across an infant's t shirt with William Wordsworth's face on it... Am I the only one who thinks it is a little weird?
“Poets… indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation” (Wordsworth 393).
The alliteration used in the phrase “furnish food for fickle tastes” caught my eye and really made me realize that Wordsworth really did have an issue with the poetry that was being produced at the time. In his writing up until this passage Wordsworth has been very tame in his considerations of Poetry. Finally he is using some strong language and forcing the reader to really start paying attention to what he has to say about Poetry and its purpose. I wish Wordsworth had used scathing language like this throughout the entirety of the essay because they were the most interesting parts of The Preface. You can actually feel his frustration when he writes about “frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse”. To be honest, most of this preface was dull and repetitive, but when Wordsworth gets worked up enough to finally say something passionate about poetry it becomes exciting and meaningful. And isn’t that his entire theory about poetry? It should be the product of passion.
In short, I wish Wordsworth would have considered his own theory about poetry being passionate instead of decorative, and applied it to his own prose.
Lilia -
ReplyDeleteSome feedback from the TA:
A fair point about the sometimes ponderous prose that both Wordsworth and Coleridge can sometimes engage in while discussing their poetic goals. And I like that rather than simply complaining about the boring bits, you point to the more active moments in the writing. I do think there is room here to think about what it is that makes prose and poetry different--beyond the obvious mechanics--and how the Romantics participated in the evolution of our notions about form and genre. In regard to the baby T: never underestimate the torments we literary nerds can subject our loved ones to.