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Wordsworth's Poems of Travel 1819-1842: Such Sweet Wayfaring (Romanticism in Perspective:Texts, Cultures, Histories)
by J. WyattThere is a long-held view that Wordsworth's inspiration dried up before the age of forty. This book opposes that view by examining the substantial body of poetry written after his fiftieth year. The argument is that, in order to appreciate this work, much of which was inspired by itineraries in Britain and in Europe, we have to read the poems as they were first published. By adopting the perspective of the contemporary reader, Wordsworth's grand design can be appreciated.
Dog-eared: Poems About Humanity's Best Friend
by Duncan WuFrom Homer to Wordsworth to Gwendolyn Brooks, learn about history's greatest writers and the furry best friends that inspired them.Dogs are at once among the most ordinary of animals and the most beloved by mankind. But what we may not realize is that for as long as we have loved dogs, our poets have been seriously engaged with them as well.In this collection, English professor Duncan Wu digs into the wealth of poetry about our furry friends to show how varied and intimate our relationships with them have been over the centuries. Homer recounts how Odysseus's loyal dog recognizes his master even after his long absence. Thomas Hardy wrote poems from a pooch's perspective, conveying a powerful sense of dogs' innocent and trusting nature. And a multitude of writers, from Lord Byron to Emily Dickinson, have turned to poetry to mourn the loss of beloved dogs. Rich and inviting, Dog-eared is a spellbinding collection of poetic musings about humans and dogs and what they mean to each other.
Francis: A Life in Songs
by Ann WroeA life of St Francis in verseThroughout her career Ann Wroe has constantly confounded expectations, following her own unique path. Now, in Francis, she turns to verse to tell the life of St Francis of Assissi. This is a sequence only Ann Wroe could write, combining a troubadour’s musicality with full grasp of the moment, and a luminous sense of Francis as both myth and man, across history and culture, in nature and community. It is a remarkable and immensely beautiful book.St Francis was one of the most compelling spirits the world has seen. He was also a poet, a musician and a dancer. His world was coloured by troubadour lays, brightened by birdsong, ordered by the bells and chants of the Church and transfigured by the angel-lyres he heard about him. For Ann Wroe, this seems a good reason to write his life in songs. It is also an excuse to record, in songs, the many ways his presence and his music still linger round us. They surprise us in chance encounters in city streets; they waylay us amid the humdrum banalities of working life; they persist in the beauties of nature. Great spirits never leave us. They echo on and on.
After Engine Trouble (Rough Trade Edition)
by Luke WrightWith one eye on social media and another on mental well-being, Luke Wright looks under the hood of a spluttering nation. Eschewing the formal verse structures of his previous two collections, Wright presents free-wheeling splenetic poems on the joys of pretentiousness, late-night carb-heavy FOMO, and the lay-bys and bypasses of a country that ‘doesn’t make anything anymore.’ Shout these poems aloud in pubs, or whisper them in B&Bs. Keep an eye on the ones you love.
Cat Among the Pigeons: Poems
by Kit WrightA brilliantly funny collection of poems involving everyone's favourite anti-hero Dave Dirt, the extraordinary afternoon of a prawn and the mysterious tale of Zoe's earrings.Witty, touching and clever - this is a classic collection from the irreverent Kit Wright.
Hoping It Might Be So: Poems 1974-2000
by Kit WrightHoping It Might Be So brings together all of Kit Wright's previous collections for adults as well as three dozen new poems. The collection, first published in 2000, was described by Christina Patterson in the Sunday Times as 'funny and profoundly humane' and by Sophie Hannah in the PN Review as 'full of verve and energy, with a strong musical quality that makes you want to read on and hear more'. Sean O'Brien in the Times Literary Supplement described Kit Wright as 'a masterly yet modest poet' while Ruth Padel in the Independent on Sunday said that 'all through his work there is that poignancy, darkness, brush with despair, which marks great comic work.' The poet Anthony Wilson said that Wright 'can be funny, serious and moving, and sometimes all three in the space of a single poem'.Hoping It Might Be So is a rewarding collection from an interesting, prolific and lively poet whose poems range from ribald to grief-stricken, elegiac to rambunctious
Soul and Substance: A Poet's Examination Papers
by Jay WrightA collection of new and startlingly original essays from an acclaimed poet, essayist, and playwrightJay Wright is widely recognized as one of the most important American poets of the past half century. But in recent years, he has also written a series of unconventional essays that he calls “examination papers,” which he defines as “designated inquiries to myself.” In these linked essays, most of which resemble prose-poems, with only a few lines set on each page, Wright explores abiding artistic and philosophical concerns, including language, aesthetic form, knowledge, time, and death. Soul and Substance presents these pieces for the first time.Drawing on everything from African mythology to mathematical axioms, Wright reflects on a wide range of topics: the difficulties of defining and confronting death; the challenge of transcending one’s own consciousness; the nature of rhythm and the structure of space; and the relationship among the self, the body, and the material world. Throughout, the book examines the limits of human knowledge and the implications of our always imperfect understanding.Experimental and original, Soul and Substance is an important addition to the work of a major writer.
English Romantic Verse
by David WrightEnglish Romantic poetry from its beginnings and its flowering to the first signs of its decadence. Nearly all the famous piéces de résistance will be found here - 'Intimations of Immortality', 'The Ancient Mariner', 'The Tyger', excerpts from 'Don Juan' - as well as some less familiar poems. As far as possible the poets are arranged in chronological order, and their poems in order of composition, beginning with eighteenth-century precursors such as Gray, Cowper, Burns and Chatterton. Naturally most space has been given over to the major Romantics - Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Clare and Keats - although their successors, poets such as Beddoes and Poe, are included too, as well as early poems by Tennyson and Browning. In an excellent introduction David Wright discusses the Romantics as a historical phenomenon, and points out their central ideals and themes.
WOMXN: Acrostics and Poems to Reclaim the Words that Have Hurt Us
by Lexy Wren-Sillevis"There are so many words, insults, labels and boxes for women to be packaged and packed off in. Often, but not always, they're words coined by men. Why that is, is a bigger conversation that is starting to be had by women everywhere. We're slowly, but oh-so-surely, making it clear that there is no man in womxn. We're writing him out and writing us back in, and we deserve a suffix all of our own that is free from patriarchal roots. So from here on in, we are WOMXN."Sticks and Stones is a powerful reclamation of the slurs and insults thrown at women for centuries. It's a righting of wrongs - a rewriting of sexist, belittling and shaming language. It's a tool for breaking free from the stereotypes and impossible standards used to confine women, transforming them into messages of resilience and resolve. And, most importantly, it's a rallying call for change, healing and empowerment.It takes the words, slurs, insults and labels that are used to diminish women every day and breaks them down and tears them apart. It transmutes and rewrites these words - sometimes with all of the pain they trigger, sometimes in the form of positive affirmations, mantras and poems - all told in acrostics.With their underlying meditative rhythms, these acrostics are also a remedy for healing wounds and empowering women to have the confidence to be their true selves. You can dip in and out, or read it cover to cover. You can come back to, and work through, any words that resonate with you. Lexy also offers clearing meditations at the back of the book to help you tackle the words that hurt you most, helping to remove them from your past, present and future.This title is illustrated by the hugely talented illustrator and print maker Margaux Carpentier. Margaux creates pictures using a symbolic language, so each piece has its own unique message for every individual. Her work is inspired by all the incredible colours of the world. She adapts her illustrations in 3D and large-scale murals, the most recent of which is currently on display in Brown Hart Gardens in Mayfair, London.
Blake, Nation and Empire
by D. Worrall S. ClarkThis book examines Blake's work in the context of discourses of nation and empire, of the construction of a public sphere, and restores the longevity to his artistic career by placing emphasis on his work in the 1820s. Relevant contexts include technology, sentimentalism, Ireland and Catholic Emancipation, missionary prospectuses and body politics.
The Prelude: The Four Texts (1798, 1799, 1805, 1850) (Penguin Classics)
by William Wordsworth Jonathan WordsworthFirst published in July 1850, shortly after Wordsworth's death, The Prelude was the culmination of over fifty years of creative work. The great Romantic poem of human consciousness, it takes as its theme 'the growth of a poet's mind': leading the reader back to Wordsworth's formative moments of childhood and youth, and detailing his experiences as a radical undergraduate in France at the time of the Revolution. Initially inspired by Coleridge's exhortation that Wordsworth write a work upon the French Revolution, The Prelude has ultimately become one of the finest examples of poetic autobiography ever written; a fascinating examination of the self that also presents a comprehensive view of the poet's own creative vision.
Lyrical Ballads
by William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor ColeridgeWhen it was first published, Lyrical Ballads enraged the critics of the day: Wordsworth and Coleridge had given poetry a voice, one decidedly different to that which had been voiced before. This acclaimed Routledge Classics edition offers the reader the opportunity to study the poems in their original contexts as they appeared to Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s contemporaries, and includes some of their most famous poems, including Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.
Lyrical Ballads
by William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor ColeridgeWhen it was first published, Lyrical Ballads enraged the critics of the day: Wordsworth and Coleridge had given poetry a voice, one decidedly different to that which had been voiced before. This acclaimed Routledge Classics edition offers the reader the opportunity to study the poems in their original contexts as they appeared to Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s contemporaries, and includes some of their most famous poems, including Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.
Lyrical Ballads: With Other Poems. In Two Volumes (Penguin Clothbound Poetry)
by William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor ColeridgeA collectible new Penguin Classics series: stunning, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets, which present each poet's most famous book of verse as it was originally published. Designed by the acclaimed Coralie Bickford-Smith and beautifully set, these slim, A format volumes are the ultimate gift editions for poetry lovers. Lyrical Ballads (1798) is a landmark collection of poems that marks the beginning of the English Romantic Movement in literature. Co-written by friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the collection broke away from traditional poetic form. Of the twenty-three poems, Wordsworth penned works such as 'Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey' and 'The Idiot Boy' that use colloquial speech and take the everyday as their theme. The collection also includes Coleridge's greatest poem 'The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere', a supernatural tale of a sailor's voyage.
Lyrical Ballads: Reprinted From The First Edition Of 1798 (1890) (Revolution And Romanticism, 1789-1834 Ser.)
by William Wordsworth Samuel ColeridgePublished in 1798, Lyrical Ballads is a dazzling collaboration containing twenty-three poems by close friends, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) - two major figures of English Romanticism. The volume heralded a new approach to poetry and expresses the poets' reflections on mankind's relationship with the forces of the world. Coleridge's contribution includes the nightmarish vision of 'The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere', one of the works for which he became best known, as well as the fantastical conversational poem 'The Foster-Mother's Tale' and the melancholic 'The Nightingale'. Wordsworth's 'We are Seven' depicts a child's naïve optimism in the face of the cruel mortality, while 'Goody Blake and Harry Gill' and 'Simon Lee' celebrate the simplicity and strength he perceived in country people, and 'Tintern Abbey' explores the healing powers of nature.Published as part of the Penguin Poetry First Editions series in which the greatest collections of poetry in English will be published in their original form. All texts have been completely reset and some minor changes made to punctuation.
Guide to the Lakes (Oxford World's Classics)
by William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes gives a first-hand account of his feelings about the unique countryside that was the source of his inspiration. He addresses concerns that are relevant today, such as how the growing number of visitors, and the money they might bring, would affect such a small and vulnerable landscape. It is now understood that Wordsworth's notion of the Lake District as 'a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy', expressed in his Guide, gave a rationale for the foundation of the National Trust in 1895 and the establishment of the Lake District National Park in 1951. Furthermore, the 2017 nomination document for the Lake District as a World Heritage site quotes this phrase in recognition of Wordsworth's contribution to the idea that 'landscape has a value, and that everyone has a right to appreciate and enjoy it'. We can now see how Wordsworth's Guide has had a far-reaching influence on the modern concept of legally-protected landscape. First published in 1810 and repeatedly revised by its author over the ensuing twenty-five years, William Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes has long been considered a crucial text for scholars of Romantic-era aesthetics, ecology, travel writing, and tourism.
Guide to the Lakes: With Mr. Wordsworth's Description Of The Scenery Of The Country, Etc. And Five Letters On The Geology Of The Lake District (Oxford World's Classics)
by William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes gives a first-hand account of his feelings about the unique countryside that was the source of his inspiration. He addresses concerns that are relevant today, such as how the growing number of visitors, and the money they might bring, would affect such a small and vulnerable landscape. It is now understood that Wordsworth's notion of the Lake District as 'a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy', expressed in his Guide, gave a rationale for the foundation of the National Trust in 1895 and the establishment of the Lake District National Park in 1951. Furthermore, the 2017 nomination document for the Lake District as a World Heritage site quotes this phrase in recognition of Wordsworth's contribution to the idea that 'landscape has a value, and that everyone has a right to appreciate and enjoy it'. We can now see how Wordsworth's Guide has had a far-reaching influence on the modern concept of legally-protected landscape. First published in 1810 and repeatedly revised by its author over the ensuing twenty-five years, William Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes has long been considered a crucial text for scholars of Romantic-era aesthetics, ecology, travel writing, and tourism.
Selected Poems: Selected Poems (Macmillan Collector's Library)
by William WordsworthA pioneer of the Romantic movement, William Wordsworth wrote about the natural world and human emotion with a clarity of language which revolutionized poetry. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition has an introduction by Peter Harness.Selected Poems brings together some of Wordsworth’s most acclaimed and influential works, including an extract from his magnus opus, The Prelude, alongside shorter poems such as ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’, ‘To a Skylark’ and ‘Tintern Abbey’. Wordsworth’s poems, often written at his home in Grasmere in the beautiful English Lake District, are lyrical evocations of nature and of spirituality. They have a force and clarity of language akin to everyday speech which was truly groundbreaking.
William Wordsworth
by William WordsworthIn this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.Earth has not anything to show more fair:Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty . . .-- Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,September 3, 1802
William Wordsworth: Everyman's Poetry (Everyman's Poetry)
by William WordsworthA revolutionary voice in English verse, and a much loved and celebrated lyric poet.
Wordsworth: 'Daffodils' and Other Poems (Pocket Poets #4)
by William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth is chiefly remembered as one of the ‘Lake Poets’. Yet he was also one of the founders of English Romanticism, a writer whose early revolutionary fervor imbued his verse and his ideals.Much of Wordsworth’s work was inspired by nature, but to a style rich in lyrical imagery he brought a deep interest in liberal humanitarianism and a profound concern for the lives, habits and speech of ordinary people, especially country people.This pocket-sized collection includes: ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ (‘Daffodils’), ‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’, ‘Character of the Happy Warrior’, ‘The Solitary Reaper’, ‘To a Sky-Lark’, ‘Tintern Abbey’, and extracts from ‘The Prelude’.
The Penguin Book of Romantic Poetry (Penguin Classics)
by Jonathan WordsworthThe Romanticism that emerged after the American and French revolutions of 1776 and 1789 represented a new flowering of the imagination and the spirit, and a celebration of the soul of humanity with its capacity for love. This extraordinary collection sets the acknowledged genius of poems such as Blake's 'Tyger', Coleridge's 'Khubla Khan' and Shelley's 'Ozymandias' alongside verse from less familiar figures and women poets such as Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson. We also see familiar poets in an unaccustomed light, as Blake, Wordsworth and Shelley demonstrate their comic skills, while Coleridge, Keats and Clare explore the Gothic and surreal.
Home at Grasmere: Extracts from the Journal of Dorothy Wordsworth and from the Poems of William Wordsworth (Penguin Classics)
by Dorothy Wordsworth William WordsworthA continuous text made up of extracts from Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal and a selection of her brother's poems. Dorothy Wordsworth kept her Journal 'because I shall give William pleasure by it'. In doing so, she never dreamt that she was giving future readers not only the chance to enjoy her fresh and sensitive delight in the beauties that surrounded her at Grasmere but also a rare opportunity to observe 'the progress of a poet's mind'. Colette Clark's skilful and perceptive arrangement of Dorothy's entries alongside William's poems throws a unique light on his creative process, and shows how the interdependence of brother and sister was a vital part in the writing of many of his great poems. By reading these poems in relation to the Journal it is possible to trace the processes by which they were committed to paper and so achieve a fuller understanding of them. A writer in her own right, Dorothy kept her Journal sparse in personal and emotional detail. Yet there is, nevertheless, a deep emotional undercurrent running beneath the surface which only falters when William marries Mary Hutchinson. Never again was Dorothy to achieve the freedom, spontaneity and the limpidly beautiful prose with which she infused and irradiated the Grasmere Journals.
Life At Grasmere
by Dorothy WordsworthThe beautiful and peaceful heart of the Lake District, Grasmere was an inspiration to both Dorothy and William Wordsworth. Hills, lakes and orchards, letter writing, walks and welcome visitors (including fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge) provoked in Dorothy's journal great, lyrical prose, which in turn influenced her brother's unsurpassed poetry. The two - journal entries and poems - are here set side by side, a glorious celebration of life and nature around Dove Cottage, over the first year they called it home.Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).