Friday, November 27, 2009
A Momentous Reunion
It was as idyllic as a sunny Sunday could be, the surrounding treelines and the tiny specks of clouds in the otherwise clear skies seemed as if undulating in a soft breeze, the temperature hovering around an amiably soothing 72 degree Fahrenheit, promised a perfect day to go frolicking in happy...
Sign in to see full entry.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Life in Kinship
Wordsworth’s poem “ The Old Cumberland Beggar ” was composed in 1798 and published in Lyrical Ballads (1800 edition). It is a touching narrative of kindness keeping a shell of a man alive; while also an exhortation against the legislative measures to get beggars into poorhouses. Scoffing at the...
Sign in to see full entry.
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Lucy Mystery
Of the five Lucy poems composed by Wordsworth four were printed in Lyrical Ballads of 1800. These four poems, all in the lyrical vein, are sober meditations on the death or apprehension of death of a girl who was the object of a deep and tender love. The love is not impassioned but meditated in...
Sign in to see full entry.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Strength of resolute unbending spirit
Another classic, immediately gripping, a narrative poem, 484 lines, if you are interested, it's Here. Such a worthwhile read it was for me. W ordsworth’s poem “Michael” occurs in Lyrical Ballads (1800). The poem’s sub-title “A pastoral poem” indicates that the poet is consciously rejecting the...
Sign in to see full entry.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Behind the World of Echoes
In There Was a Boy, Wordsworth addresses not the boy who is now dead but the cliffs and islands of Lake Windermere that had outlasted him. The scene is widened to take the stars rising in the east and setting. It is in this context of the vast spaces of the universe and the inexorable movement of...
Sign in to see full entry.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
She was a Phantom of Delight
I share my further delight of Wordsworth's wonderful poems... (they are of a mystic's) Wordsworth’s poem “ She was a Phantom of Delight ” is a tribute to his wife Mary Hutchinson who was his cousin and, while a girl, had been his schoolmate. They both were born in 1770 and were united in marriage in...
Sign in to see full entry.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Universality of language in tranquillity
"The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more." ( The Solitary Reaper ) In the course of one of his walking tours, Wordsworth once saw a Scottish Highland girl reaping and singing all alone in a field. Her song, which had a melancholy ring, filled the entire valley, and the poet was...
Sign in to see full entry.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
On the Nature and Purpose of Poetry
Wordsworth wrote the famous “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads in which he developed his view of the nature of poetic process, the origin and purpose of poetry, and the language most suitable for it. The “ Preface ” is at once a recoil against the stilted and imitative poetry of the eighteenth century and...
Sign in to see full entry.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Poem # 2255663320 (Rhyme unrhyme scheme)
Surprisingly, I won a prize for an idiotic poem - 'Extempore' at IIT, Chicago. Her it is. The topic was "Complain, and I'll never let you." Man's drink Woman's poison One swig, just one please Then I'll not, promise never Lemme live today, just fo'the day Complain I'll no more, no more, No more Dear...
Sign in to see full entry.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Dreams and Life
Dreams are a wonderfully compensatory mechanism given us by God, one that sustains us through the thick and thins of life. They make come back to life all that ever was dear to us - lost or dead. This is brought out so beautifully and tellingly in Donne’s The Dream, in a style typical of the...
Sign in to see full entry.
