The Troubadour Podcast

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William Blake was the most eccentric of the Romantics. He was equally important in visual arts as well as poetry. His books included beautiful engravings all hand made, and for this reason he was not well known until the 20th century.

A man opposed to oppression and repression of all times, in his work we see an imaginative mind building an entire world before our eyes. 

This first poem, "The Piper" is from The Songs of Innocence and it serves as the introduction to this book.

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This episode was recording during the holidays 2019. The Holidays are a time of reflections on your past as you prepare for New Years Eve resolutions for your future.

Can recollecting your past be done improperly? Is it an infallible process? If it is not infallible, what should we do about it? These are some of the themes we will see in Tintern Abbey by Wordsworth.

The full title of this poem is 
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern
Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye
during a Tour. July 13, 1798.

In this episode I explore the final poem of the 1798 Lyrical Ballads, Tintern Abbey. Here we get the first poem that shows the Giant Wordsworth. The former poems in Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth were great explorations of his poetic abilities, but in Tintern Abbey we get the full philosophical, psychological, autobiographical and poetic mastery that is Wordsworth.


For my full notes and breakdown go to troubadourmag.com

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This is one of Wordsworth's most far-reaching poems. It takes place in a land he never set foot on: America.

Based on stories he read about traveling tribes of American Indians, he wrote this harrowing tale about a woman who is too sick to continue walking with her tribe, so they abandon her.

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In the Oxford Book of English Verse, edited by Christopher Ricks, there are 9 William Wordsworth poems. Old Man Travelling, animal tranquility and decay was selected twice.

Like many of Wordsworth's best poems, this one power is so subtle it is easy to miss it. However, it is poetry and art par excellence. 

Since the poem is so short I do not wish to spoil the exhilerating emotional revelation that occurs in a renewed investigation into this poem, so I will merely say that the experience this poem will give you will make you a better person. (Please note that I do not say "may" make you a better person.)

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In November, 2019 the state of Oklahoma released almost 500 "non-violent" criminals in the largest commutation in US history. This brought up many issues regarding the justice system and the court system. But it also brings up a critical issue about the role and goals of the penal system. 

Can convicts be reformed? If it is possible then what is in our best interest to support? If a convict CAN be reformed, then should not not attempt to help them do so? And at the very least, should we not get in the way of possible reform?

These are some important questions, among many others,that WIlliam Wordsworth asked in this poem.

It was so controversial, in fact, that he removed it from all subsequent publication.

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The Female Vagrant is one of Wordsworth's most political poems. It tells the story two wanderers seeking shelter during a stormy night on Salisbury Plain in England. The woman tells how she came to be destitute and alone: her father had been evicted from his cottage in the Lakes by a wealthy industrialist neighbor, she had married but the advent of war had ruined them and, in a last desperate attempt to support her and their children, he volunteered for the army. He is shipped to fight in the war of the rebel colonialists in 1776 and she follows him. In America, he and their three children all die. She returns to wander Britain desolate, deprived of all home and sick.

The poem is an investigation into the mind of the female wanderer (vagrant). As is Wordsworth's principal object in most of his poetry:  "I proposed to myself in these Poems was to chuse incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men; and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement."

There are many of the romantic flairs we have come to know of this period. The woman, like Hugo's gypsies, is abandoned but remains steadfast and strong. Only when she has lost everything due to imaginary lines drawn in the sand does she lose her "inner spirit." 

This is the code of the romantic. To explore the inner world of human beings, so as to better understand human nature. For Wordsworth, experiencing the French Revolution and all of its upheaval, this was a story that struck his imagination, one night, as he lay exhausted at the stones of Stonehenge.

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In this special episode I quote several passages from William Wordsworth's prefaces to the Lyrical Ballads and passages from C. Bradley Thompson's newest book "America's Revolutionary Mind."

My argument is that Wordsworth, in telling people to put away their books and look to Nature is reflecting a philosophical view from Isaac Newton and John Locke.

Up ! up ! my friend, and clear your looks,
Why all this toil and trouble ?
Up ! up ! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you’ll grow double.

There are times when we should put away our books. More importantly, there are dangers to only look in books for answers and not thinking for ourselves. Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads and elsewhere is desperately trying to get people to look at the reality of human nature and the greater Nature that man inhabits.

This is a lesson we need now more than ever, as we are turning our backs on Man, Nature and the Right morality for living on this earth.

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I am releasing this poem on Halloween, because it is indeed a horror story. In fact, it was so terrifying that when the young Mary Shelley first heard a reading of it, she hid behind a chair. Today, this poem may not terrify us in the way that it did people at the time, but I will be making two big arguments as to why you should challenge yourself to read poems like this even if you at first do not like them.

Coleridge's Mariner may be one of the most influential poems of the British romantics. Not only is there a popular Iron Maiden song but much gothic literature of the 19th century, from Frankenstein and Dracula to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The House of the Seven Gables and the Fall of Usher was inspired by this poem. In fact, Coleridge's Mariner brings a major new strain of literary experience onto the scene. 

In this episode I will give you the arguments to read poems you don't like, provide a summary of the poem, read a special version of the poem, give you the origin story of the poem, some ways to understand the poem as well as a breakdown of its ideology and the influence it held.

So yes, this is a big episode, prepare yourselves!

"Listen, Stranger! Storm and WInd,
A Wind and Tempest strong!
For days and weeks it play'd us freaks--
Like Chaff we drove along."

Do not be chaff driven along by a tempest. Understand this poem by listening to this episode.

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Paul Guay conceived and co-wrote "Liar, Liar" and co-wrote "The Little Rascals" and "Heartbreakers." 

We had a wonderful conversation about movies and movie making, art and culture, the changing tide of media, being a writer and the writing process, Paul's love of WWE, his filmmaking experiences, the Auteur Theory of FIlmmaking and much much more. 

If you are interested in how movies are made, how to make a career in Hollywood, how the landscape is changing as well as the art of cinema, novels, short stories, poems and how that culture impacts our lives and society, this is a conversation not to be missed.

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In his conversation poem, "Expostulation and Reply," William Wordsworth brings the art of argument into poetry. 

A school teacher, Matthew, trained in the classical method of jamming facts into people's foreheads, admonishes young William for sitting out in nature and contemplating it. “Up! Up! and drink the spirit breath’d / “From dead men to their kind," he says. 

In other words, get out of nature and read your books young Willy!

Well, you can imagine the young romantic poet had something to say about that!