BLOG #1: OUR LITERARY HERITAGE

Hello Everyone,

Today, I want to do a bit of time travelling back to the last couple of years of the 18th century and the first edition of Coleridge and Wordsworth’s collaborative Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems. This was closely followed by Wordsworth’s own edition of the Lyrical Ballads, adding more of his poems and his famous Preface which set out the poetic principle that ‘all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ experienced by someone ‘possessed of more than usual organic sensibility’ whose deep contemplations of those raw emotions ‘recollected in tranquility,’ will embue the subject with such ‘beauty and dignity’ that it will attain a universal significance.

Yes, Wordsworth had high expectations of a poet and a poet’s role in capturing the true nature of the life of ordinary people, transforming it to the profound truths of human existence. His short statements reflecting on the role of a poet succinctly pronounce his high-flown ideas of the new poet of the new century. ‘Poetry is the image of man and nature,’ he declares, and we need look no further than his extraordinary autobiography in poetic form to see the clarity and power of his observations of human nature and the natural world that he enjoyed from his boyhood and which had such a seminal effect on his poetry. Moreover, he states, without any sense of hyperbole or vanity, ‘Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge’ . . . and ‘is as immortal as the heart.’ Wordsworth both acknowledged the importance of crafting the raw materials and emotions of experience and extolled the virtue of the poet who ‘rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion.’

It is breath-taking to look back at Wordsworth’s treatise on poetry and the poet’s role. Though we live in a different world today, Wordsworth has encapsulated the essence of the poet’s character and purpose in a way that has not been superseded. I commend it to all the poets reading this.

May all of us who work at mastering the art of poetry catch at least a glimple of such poetic grandeur in our earnest efforts.

My very best wishes,

Julie