Ramblings on Wordsworth

OK, I'm in a bad mood today, PMSing and all though a terrible day at work. (Seriously, the last day of work I wrote about was a cakewalk compared to today, but I won't gripe about it.) So, that means it's time to write about something that I like.

When I first started reading poetry, I began with Dickinson, Poe and Frost. Shortly afterward was added Wordsworth. I was 13 or 14 when I bought Six Centuries of Great Poetry, which I nitpicked my way though, since I couldn't understand half of it. What I did truly discover in there was Wordsworth. I know that the book at least had "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and "The Solitary Reaper," which I liked the best. Now here I am again, 8 years later, re-evaluating Wordsworth again, which I'm sure is going to be a lifetime process. I never stopped liking him. How could I?

However, the best thing about WW's (that's what I always call him when I write) poetry is that, as far as I know, it's public domain, and therefore, websites like this exist. I mean, I still prefer reading books, but what a great reference!

Strangely, the most Wordsworth I've ever kept around the house is a little Dover edition with 40 poems or so. I decided to buy the re-issued Essential Wordsworth at work last week and I've been reading a lot of it ever since. Seamus Heaney collected it, and the poem I wished he would have included was "Simon Lee", which, in my opinion, is WW's best ballad-type poem, but he included a lot of other pieces that I didn't know.

The first poem in the book is called "Written in Very Early Youth" (I can't find a date for it, but I'm thinking it's in the 1785-90 range, meaning he would have been 15-20 years old) and it goes like this:

Calm is all nature as a resting wheel.
The kine are couched upon the dewy grass;
The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass,
Is cropping audibly his later meal:
Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal
O'er vale, and mountain, and the starless sky.
Now, in this blank of things, a harmony,
Home-felt, and home-created, comes to heal
That grief for which the sense still supply
Fresh food; for only then, when memory
Is hushed, am I at rest, My Friends! restrain
Those busy cares that would ally my pain;
Oh! leave me to myself, nor let me feel
the officious touch that makes me droop again.

I'd never read anything from WW's "early youth" so I was very surprised by this poem. What I have to say about it isn't groundbreaking, but just an exercise for myself, really.

OK. WW grew up in what is often called the Age of Johnson, a literary age dominated by Dr. Johnson himself. Everything was balanced an symmetrical, reason ruled supreme, and there wasn't a whole lot of what WW would call "passion" in poetry. Poetry was definitely being taken over by new voices. In 1751, Gray published his Elegy, which is much more of a lyric poem than what the Augustans were writing. Very moody, very personal, dominated by something other than reason. Reading the poem above, one can see so much of the Elegy in it. It is set in the countryside at dusk and begins by recording the evening time activities of various animals. It also has a similar sullen tone.

The language is also reminiscent of Gray and a number of other writers, at least at the beginning. I think Gray is on record as saying that "the language of poetry is not the language of the age," meaning that it shouldn't be colloquial. Well, seeing WW use "kine" is an eye-opener, though by the time he came to be a mature poet, his thoughts about colloquial language in poetry would be the opposite of Gray's.

The form of this poem is interesting, also. A word about the poetry of the 18^th century. Sometimes, when reading 18th century poetry, it feels like EVERY SINGGLE FRIGGIN' POEM in English was written in couplets. The couplet is the poetic equivalent of the Augustan balanced sentence, and actually, if you're really good, even both your lines inside the couplet will be balanced. "To err is human, to forgive divine." I mean, do you see how balanced that is? Pope was totally the master. This effort of WW's, however is not balanced. Most couplets do not contain a complete thought, as the traditional Augustan "closed couplet" did. Here's the interesting thing about this poem, though: it's a sonnet. Nobody, NOBODY who was anybody in the 18th century wrote sonnets. It just wasn't done. And since this is a sonnet in couplets, it doesn't follow the traditional rules of the sonnet, either.

The most crucial thing about this poem, though, is that it is uncategorized, as far as the subject matter is concerned. We must understand that our idea of an original work probably originated around the time of the Romantics. We praise people for being original, now. In fact, originality seems to be the most important thing when we appraise a work of art, but it didn't start out that way. Think back to Homer. Did he make up the stories of the Iliad and Odyssey? Did Ovid make up the stories in the Metamorphoses? Did Chaucer make up the stories in the Canterbury Tales? Did Shakespeare make up the stories for his plays? The answer is no. These writers deliberately pilfered already-known stories to make their own versions. By the 1800's, we took this a step farther. Aside from Augustan, the period is also called Neo-Classical, because of its reliance on classic literature for a model. Out of ancient Greece and Rome, only so many kinds of literature came: elegies, epics, tragedies, comedies, lyrics, satires, epistles, etc. Therefore, the Augustans believed that you should only write in the forms set by the ancients. And you could only mix genres under certain circumstances. For instance, it was thought that the epic should be reserved for heroic tales. Alexander Pope caught a lot of shit for using the epic as a vehicle for satire in the Dunciad. Most people thought that it just wasn't done. Well, at any rate, since the sonnet didn't come about until the middle ages, the Augustans weren't keen on using it, which is what makes WW's poem interesting.

However, the best thing about this poem is the subject matter, because it's totally WW's. "My Friends! Restrain / those busy cares that would allay my pain." This is not an easily pre-categorized sentiment, but it's totally Wordsworth. It reminds me of the "vacant or pensive mood" of "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" or the

Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning.

of "Simon Lee." This quality, the expression of true, forceful, awkward emotion is what I like best about WW, and I'm glad to see it in his poetry so early.