Had he lived William Wordsworth would have been 250 years old this April (April 7th.,). Celebrations were planned, particularly in Grasmere, Cumbria, home of the excellent Wordsworth Trust. I\u2019m thinking that actual celebrations will not now take place, so here is a digital one.<\/p>\n
\u2018In my youth\u2019 (said the sage) it wasn\u2019t cool to like William\u2019s poetry, but as a hungry reader, I read. And, secretly, couldn\u2019t understand why my peers were not as excited by \u2018Tintern Abbey\u2019 and the \u2018Intimations Ode\u2019 as I was. I was a bit mystified by much of the\u00a0Lyrical<\/em>\u00a0Ballads<\/em>, particularly \u2018Now We Are Seven\u2019, but I read the Preface and began to understand the endeavour of the man (and his chum Coleridge).<\/p>\n It might be some kind of comment on the late fifties\/early sixties but it was not until after I\u2019d finished an MA and began to teach that my current admiration for Wordsworth and his poetry emerged. Allowing myself to read Mary Moorman\u2019s biography of William\u2019s early life\u00a0 (rather than relying as I usually do on a close reading of poetry texts) was a considerable gift. I found a solitary observant boy wandering about the countryside, a man who, in his summer holiday from Uni, walked across France to see the Alps, and who, as a political radical, went in 1791 to revolutionary France, fell in love and fathered a child. I came to see the\u00a0Lyrical Ballads<\/em>\u00a0(1798) in a political context, a determined attempt to bring poetry out of the context of an educated readership and into the world of audience.<\/p>\n Among the poems that Wordsworth wrote in the 1790s are the group now known as the \u2018Lucy poems\u2019\u00a0 (four of which appeared in the second edition of\u00a0Lyrical Ballads<\/em>). He spent the very cold winter of 1798 living in Germany with his beloved sister Dorothy \u2013 the Lucy poems date from then. Here\u2019s one of them.<\/p>\n She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways<\/strong><\/p>\n She dwelt among the untrodden ways A violet by a mossy stone She lived unknown, and few could know Sardonic readers will like to read Hartley Coleridge\u2019s parody of these lines (which includes \u2018A Bard whom there were none to praise, \/ And very few to read\u2019). William does saunter blithely along the precipice brink of bathos. Nevertheless this poem has held my attention for many years. I like the measured pace of it, almost walking, the three short stanzas, the alternation of long and short lines, the basic rhyme scheme (abab, cdcd, efef), the wholly pared down vocabulary, the directness of the syntax. I think the middle stanza is extraordinary, the juxtaposition of the half hidden flower, the smallness, with the panorama of the morning or evening sky and that singularly bright star. (Actually more usually either Venus or Jupiter but still one of the necessary things to see on your visit to this planet, particularly when close to a crescent moon). There are clever things: the long dash at the start of line 3 stanza two, giving breath to the missing syllable, the lovely softness of sound in \u2018Lucy ceased\u2019 (cy ceas), the way the reader\u2019s breathing has to change at the end of the penultimate line \u2018grave, and, oh, \/ The.\u2019 (My full stop)<\/p>\n The UK population in 1790 was about 8 million, so, although most of these lived in the countryside, there was plenty of space for \u2018untrodden ways\u2019. William is a great advocate for open spaces and solitude, the singular figure in an open landscape (\u2018the lonely leech gatherer on the moor\u2019). The singularity extends into the specificity in this poem \u2013 \u2018A Maid\u2019, \u2018A violet\u2019, \u2018a star\u2019. The \u2018springs of Dove\u2019 is also a specific location \u2013 this is the Dove in Cumbria, not the more famous one in Derbyshire.<\/p>\n What\u2019s it all about? Love and death, maybe? I experience this as a poem with a lot of feeling packed into it. And loss, the experience of it, the processing of it, is one of the essential tempers for the \u2018still, sad music of humanity\u2019. Nobody knows who Lucy was, or if indeed there was any actual Lucy, but it is an interesting choice of name, the root comes from the Latin for light and the martyred St Lucy is associated with eyesight (frequently portrayed with her eyes on a plate, she\u2019s also a patron saint of authors). Lucifer was for a long time a name for the morning star (the \u2018one\u2019 star of the poem). As with all short and deliberate poems the meaning charge of every word signifies \u2013 am I alone in finding an eroticism in the \u2018half hidden\u2019 violet?<\/p>\n After I\u2019d used quite a chunk of time, back in the day, studying the Lucy poems I discovered a new respect for the famous daffodil poem.<\/p>\n I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud<\/strong><\/p>\n I wandered lonely as a cloud Continuous as the stars that shine The waves beside them danced; but they For oft, when on my couch I lie This, I suspect, is what persons of my generation think of as\u00a0the<\/u>\u00a0nature poem. Younger poets, in particular, probably have more of a connection with John Clare\u2019s poems. But anyway there are relationships between \u2018She Dwelt\u2019 and \u2018I wandered\u2019: the outdoor setting, the emphasis on loneliness and isolation, the flower (daffodil instead of violet), the stars (\u2018milky way\u2019 instead of only \u2018one\u2019). Also the walking pace of the verse and how it fits the subject matter (plus, of course, the accessible vocabulary and the unsophisticated rhyme scheme). And both poems are celebrations of feeling. (I think I remember from Mary Moorman that Wordsworth was in the habit of writing his poems in his head as he walked and then coming back to Dove Cottage, or wherever of their many residences, and dictating them to Dorothy).<\/p>\n Pathetic fallacy is \u2018a literary device wherein the author attributes human emotions and traits to nature or inanimate objects.\u2019 When I was a young critic this was not thought to be a good thing. You could undermine the life of this poem by pointing out the importance of \u2018dancing\u2019, \u2018dance\u2019, \u2018danced\u2019 and \u2018dances.\u2019 And then arguing the inappropriateness of using this to picture the involuntary movement of the flowers. Or the outrageousness of assuming that a cloud could experience loneliness. But I don\u2019t think like that anymore. I am inclined to believe that a cloud might contain sensation, that the daffodils might have constructed the pliability of their stems for more than one reason. And then again my parents explained to me the meaning of \u2018poetic licence\u2019 long before I went to school. I think it\u2019s great that William constructed a poem which so clearly celebrates what poetry can do. Namely re-connect the reader with the energy of their own emotional courage. \u2018Poetry\u2019 he famously wrote, \u2018is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.\u2019 These two poems certainly do what it says on the tin.<\/p>\n THE RIALTO<\/em>\u00a0IS CURRENTLY RUNNING A \u2018NATURE AND PLACE\u201d POETRY COMPETITION: STILL TIME TO ENTER YOUR POEMS.<\/a><\/p>\n COVID-19 NEWS FROM\u00a0THE RIALTO<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Chaucer opens his\u00a0Canterbury Tales<\/em>\u00a0with the line, We can\u2019t be doing that this April, and it\u2019s not going to be easy looking for the signals of spring if you are halfway up a crowded tower block in any city any where. Nevertheless, given that one way out of anxiety is to focus thoroughly on something outside of yourself, be it tracing the lines on the palm of your hand, (looking for lines you have never seen before), or, say, recalling every step of a walk with your beloved, we\u2019d like you to write poems.<\/p>\n Poems for us to read and think about for the\u00a0next issue of the magazine\u00a0<\/strong>(94), poems that you\u2019d like to be considered for the\u00a0Nature and Place Poetry Competition<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(with its useful cash prizes in this cash flow crisis time), poems that gather together in a pamphlet sized group – eschewing social distancing – for our\u00a0Pamphlet Competition<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong>Details of all these potential routes for your creativity can be found on our website.<\/p>\n The judge for the Nature competition is Pascale Petit, the judge for the Pamphlet competition is Will Harris. They are both eager to find new poets and new poetry.<\/p>\n Write!!!! Please.<\/p>\n
\nBeside the springs of Dove,
\nA Maid whom there were none to praise
\nAnd very few to love:<\/p>\n
\nHalf hidden from the eye!
\n\u2013 Fair as a star, when only one
\nIs shining in the sky.<\/p>\n
\nWhen Lucy ceased to be;
\nBut she is in her grave, and, oh,
\nThe difference to me!<\/p>\n
\nThat floats on high o\u2019er vales and hills,
\nWhen all at once I saw a crowd,
\nA host, of golden daffodils;
\nBeside the lake, beneath the trees,
\nFluttering and dancing in the breeze.<\/p>\n
\nAnd twinkle on the milky way,
\nThey stretched in never-ending line
\nAlong the margin of a bay:>
\nTen thousand saw I at a glance,
\nTossing their heads in sprightly dance.<\/p>\n
\nOut-did the sparkling waves in glee:
\nA poet could not but be gay,
\nIn such a jocund company:
\nI gazed \u2013 and gazed \u2013 but little thought
\nWhat wealth the show to me had brought:<\/p>\n
\nIn vacant or in pensive mood,
\nThey flash upon that inward eye
\nWhich is the bliss of solitude;
\nAnd then my heart with pleasure fills,
\nAnd dances with the daffodils.<\/p>\n
\n\u2018Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote\u2019
\nand goes on for ten more lines to describe the awakening spring (lines which I still can\u2019t read without getting spine shivers) until,\u2018Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n