"And Venus to the Loves around / Remark'd how ill we all dissembled"

[larryhammer]

The Piece: "To the Skylark"

The Place: Palgrave's The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language

The Stats: exclamation points: 6; question marks: 2; semicolons: 2; periods: 1; anachronistic grammatical forms: 9; percentage of adjectives that form interesting or unexpected compliments to the noun: 28%; gratuitous personifications: 2; bizarre comparisons of infinite and finite things: 2; coherent final lines: 0.

[Poll #1123361]

---L.

Comments

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I never understood why Wordsworth got canonized. I mean, Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will may be legal iambic pentameter, but every foot clanks like the step of an armored knight who is naturally overweight and has poor balance. This is a great poet?

[larryhammer]

Well, "at will" is a graceful foot, metrically if not syntactically -- espeically if you let the stress fall naturally on the first syllable of "into". But the line in general, yeah, that.

I'm not sure whether the poem would be better for replacing the bird or the wise with a ninja.

---L.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Not great wordsworth. still trying to figure out what type of the wise, who soar means--i love the sound of the words, but can't find any sense.

[larryhammer]

I think that what he's trying to say is that the bird typifies wise people in that it soars high as if in lofty thought but stays near its nest as it does so -- which is how the Heaven and Home get pulled in, though how those are akin (and, "points"?) is, ah, obscure to me. As I said, coherent final lines: 0.

---L.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, I get it now. It doesn't quite work, but I do love the sound of those words.

[larryhammer]

I confess I don't think it works at all -- the vehicle for this metaphor is not enough "like" the meaning for the comparison to make sense. He strained too far.

---L.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I thought you were going to give us Shelley's skylark. Wordsworth's skylark is a little less soar-y.

(icon is not a skylark... I know...)

[larryhammer]

A bluebird is quite appropriate here.

---L.

[harvestar.livejournal.com]

not one of my favorite wordsworths...

[larryhammer]

*cough*

[harvestar.livejournal.com]

I like my "wandered lonely as a cloud"! ;) :P

[packbat.livejournal.com]

As far as Wordsworth is concerned, I quite appreciate his politics...

One request I must make of my reader, which is, that in judging these poems he would decide by his own feelings genuinely, and not by reflection upon what will probably be the judgment of others. How common is it to hear a person say, I myself do not object to this style of composition, or this or that expression, but to such and such classes of people it will appear mean or ludicrous! This mode of criticism, so destructive of all sound unadulterated judgment, is almost universal: let the reader then abide, independently, by his own feelings, and, if he finds himself affected, let him not suffer such conjectures to interfere with his pleasure.

- Wordsworth's preface to Lyrical Ballads, qtd. in Forms of Verse: British and American, deFord and Lott, Appleton-Century-Crofts, NY, 1971, pg. 36

...but I find his verse unsatisfactory.

(This reply brought to you by ~/Documents/quotes.txt.)

[larryhammer]

Would that he had stayed true to his politics.

---L.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I don't think he was as devoted to his cause as he thought he was, even then. She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She_Dwelt_among_the_Untrodden_Ways) (one of his three poems quoted in my book) is quite nice, though.

[larryhammer]

I like asakiyume's rewrite of that, myself.

---L.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

So do I, now that you point it out. Hartley Coleridge's (http://victorianitas.blogspot.com/2007/04/and-oh-difference.html) is good, too.

[larryhammer]

Bwah!

---L.

[alpha-strike.livejournal.com]

I believe this expresses my opinion well enough:

He was wont to
speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man
and a soldier; and now is he turned orthography; his
words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many
strange dishes.
- Much Ado About Nothing
(Benedick at II, iii)

I started to fade at the will/still in lines 5 and 6, and my eyes glazed over at 14. But I know squat about poetry; perhaps it's supposed to be this ... bad.

I glaze over the second stanza more than the third

[larryhammer]

I don't think he intended to make it bad. I think he utterly failed to make it good.

---L.

[sharonskinner.livejournal.com]

Much classic poetry is difficult to read at best, but IMHO I think you need to take into account the politics of poetry at the time it was written when critiquing it. However, that is also a point that is often debated.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

Not one if his best... but I think he's mostly talented, but factor in sounds, rhythm, etc...

Thanks for the link -- I need to read Bartleby the Scrivner (sp?) for class and they look like they have lots of nice, old stories in good-sized print.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Bartleby the Scrivener, I believe - and yes, it's there. Another good source for out-of-copyright materials is Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page).

(Incidentally, did you know H. Beam Piper is out of copyright? 'Strue!)