The Troubadour Podcast

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It is said that Coleridge's greatest achievement was William Wordsworth. There is some truth to this. But he was also a great poet in his own right. In Lyrical Ballads he and Wordsworth changed English sensibilities (and American) completely. While Wordsworth was the greater poet, Coleridge was the greater philosopher. It is Coleridge's insights as a critic which encapsulates English Romanticism.

In this poem published in 1798, he not only conveys a new style of sensualness but also critiques the literarati before him. It is a truly Literary poem in that it is very aware of the literature that came prior. 

The Nightingale opens with Colerdge painting a picture of a nighttime scene with friends. They sit on a "mossy bridge," where they will think on nature. Then, almost on cue, "the Nightingale begins its song." This bird causes him to reflect on the writers of yore. Men who wrote that the nightingale's song was a melancholy one. To which Coleridge replies "A melancholy bird? Oh idle thought!"

He goes on to convey a completely different way to approach our experience of knowledge, learning, nature and literature. 

If you have ever wanted to truly experience the grandeur of nature and man in nature, this is a good poem to get you started.

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Great men can battle many things, jealousy, hate, scorn, dissolute tongues, but what about neglect? Can a great man or woman perservere in the face of utter lifelong neglect?

What would Einstein be like in old age, had no one taken his theory of relativity seriously? What about Dostoevsky's novels? Galileo famously was locked in a tower. At least he was not neglected!

Neglect it not scorn or hatred. It is to be ignored, unacknowledged, ghosted. This is something profoundly worse than fear or fury.

In this haunting poem, Wordsworth writes about a man he knew at Hawkshead school. The man was educated, a genius even. But something made him abscond from humanity. The only monument were some lines left upon a seat in a yew-tree which stands near the lake of Esthwaite on a desolate prt of the shore, yet commanding a beautiful prospect.

Listen in to hear these powerful lines.

Visit https://www.troubadourmag.com/ to subscribe to the podcast.

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One element we miss in reading poetry today is context. We often read poems isolated and alone (the poems that is...) They were meant to be read as a totality. Wordsworth and Coleridge carefully selected the poems they would publish and in what order. To fully understand Wordsworth's haunting "Lucy" poems, we must explore them as they were meant to be read, in the context of "Lyrical Ballads."

Lyrical Ballads was initially published in 1798 and it effectually launched the Romantic movement in England. In fact, it had profound effect on all the romantics including the French romantics. 

It is impossible for us to understand the magnatitude of the change, unless we think of it in our modern context. Imagine for a moment that the next Marvel movie featured one of the characters, perhaps Captain America or Iron Man, who came out and who spoke in Shakespearean language. For instance:

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:"

This is a $100 million dollar movie mind you. You'd be shocked. Maybe awed. Maybe curious to learn what the the words meant. However you felt, it would be a radical turn in moviemaking today. 

That is the profundity of Lyrical Ballads in 1798. It changed the way poetry was read, written and experienced. it changed the characters worthy of writing about. It changed the themes worthy to explore. it changed the way we look at the world. it left the dusty tomes behind and wrote of high emotion, imagination, wild characters... That is, romance!

This is the context of The Lucy Poems. And I hope you join me in this hour long discussion of the 5 lucy poems as well as the poetry that surrounds them.

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Here is a special fourth of July poem. Longfellow, writing during the build-up to the civil war, is encouraging the north to remember that the ship of state is not fully built. It is up to the next generation to fully institute the vision of the founders: This means ending slavery.

This is a poem that is primarily analogistic. It is a supremely patriotic and American poem.

If you prefer to listen to the poem, go to www.troubadourmag.comwhere you can subscribe to the podcast on itunes, spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts.

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I recorded this the day after a life altering two lectures by Lisa VanDamme at Objectivist Conference 2019 "Literature and the Quest for Meaning," and "John Keats Life and Poetry." They should be up on youtube soon, I'll get the links.

In this Sunday Morning Poetry I compare one of the poems she taught us with a poem by William Wordsworth. There are several recommendations for other resources by Lisa and Dr. Leonard Peikoff that helped guide me in reading poetry. Make sure to join Lisa's group and download her app at www.readwithmebookgroup.com.

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This is the 4th of the "Lucy" poems by William Wordsworth. In this one we get another poem about Wordsworth's view of death. 

Wordsworth kicked off the English Romantic movement. He, like the romantics that proceeded him, was heavily focused on the internal world of humans. As the French Romanticist, Victor Hugo put it, "There is one thing grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one thing grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul." 
The lucy poems taken as a whole are very helpful in understanding how unique this viewpoint really is. Why do we have the thoughts in our heads that we do? Where do those thoughts come from? What associations do we make in moments of high passion and why those associations? And, most importantly, how does the external world affect our internal one?

If you have not listened to the other episodes, then listen to this one! I give a brief overview at the beginning of the key points. 

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Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower

by William Wordsworth

Three years she grew in sun and shower, 

Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower 

On earth was never sown; 

This Child I to myself will take; 

She shall be mine, and I will make 

A Lady of my own. 

"Myself will to my darling be 

Both law and impulse: and with me 

The Girl, in rock and plain, 

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 

Shall feel an overseeing power 

To kindle or restrain. 

"She shall be sportive as the fawn 

That wild with glee across the lawn 

Or up the mountain springs; 

And hers shall be the breathing balm, 

And hers the silence and the calm 

Of mute insensate things. 

"The floating clouds their state shall lend 

To her; for her the willow bend; 

Nor shall she fail to see 

Even in the motions of the Storm 

Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form 

By silent sympathy. 

"The stars of midnight shall be dear 

To her; and she shall lean her ear 

In many a secret place 

Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 

And beauty born of murmuring sound 

Shall pass into her face. 

"And vital feelings of delight 

Shall rear her form to stately height, 

Her virgin bosom swell; 

Such thoughts to Lucy I will give 

While she and I together live 

Here in this happy dell." 

Thus Nature spake—The work was done— 

How soon my Lucy's race was run! 

She died, and left to me 

This heath, this calm and quiet scene; 

The memory of what has been, 

And never more will be. 

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Of the 5 Lucy poems this one is the prime example of the Wordsworthian endeavor to trace the associations we make in a state of excitement. 

Doubtless, there has been a time when you were passionately in love with someone and they you. In the height of your love, while you made your way to your lovers house, you had a moment's terror that they wouldn't be there or that they would leave you. Maybe, they have lost interest in you or found someone else to love. Or possibly, they inexplicably die. 

This is the experience of Wordsworth's strange fit of passion. The aim of the poem is to explore the origins of the associations which led to this strange conclusion: that his lover Lucy would be dead.

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Sunday Morning Poetry: "I Travelled Among Unknown Men" by William Wordsworth.

This is our next "lucy" poem. 

The lucy poems deal with death and the emotions surrounding death. In this poem, Wordsworth connects his homesick feeling about England to his love for a woman who died.

As Wordsworth put it in a letter to a friend "... a great poet out... to a certain degree to rectify men's feelings, to give them new compositions of feeling, to render their feelings more san pure and permanent."

In this poem and all the Lucy Poems, Wordsworth accomplishes this.

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Wordsworth was a poet worthy of being uttered in the same breath as Shakespeare. His ballads and sonnets are both simple and profound in a way that even transcends the bard. More, his manner of stirring the imagination of his reader is unprecedented.

Our poem today is the first of the FIVE Lucy poems. (note: some people believe there are more than 5 LUCY poems, but, alas, they are wrong.) :) In the show I explain why.

These five poems should be experienced and understood together, so each week we will explore the Lucy Poems. 

We will also be exploring Wordsworth's and Coleridge's philosophy of poetry, with special emphasis on the Preface to the 1802 Lyrical Ballads. Here we will find surprising insights into the nature of poetry and life, and, even more intriguing, a connection between Wordsworth's philosophy and that of author Ayn Rand. 

Tune in here for the video or go to troubadourmag.com and subscribe to the audio podcast there.

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Whether or not you are a lover of fine art, Linda Cordair can help you discover personal pieces that will change your life.

Linda is the co-owner of Cordair Fine Art Gallery in Napa Valley, California. https://cordair.com/

The Cordair's have a special showing of over 100 pieces this summer for Objectivist http://ocon.aynrand.org/ We talked about some of the pieces they will be bringing, as well as ways to make art more personal in your life, even if you don't believe yourself to be an art lover.