Preface is to 1800 as Reality Hunger is to 2010

Preface to Lyrical Ballads is not a piece of criticism. Wordsworth says this of himself: “I am not a critic” (556). So how do we reconcile this with the way that he talks about poetry and “the Poet?” How can we take his statements, like, “All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings?” (562).

If he intended to propose a standard of criticism or literary interpretation that is universally applicable, he failed, for if all artists strove to the standards he sets up, poetry would be hopelessly boring and unchanging. We would all right in Ballad stanzas! His voice should only be taken in the context of his time. To be frank, his ideas are outdated, but useful and we ought to adapt them to fit our own time and to understand the way that art changed in his. It would be dangerous to the art if we still suggested that poetry derives all of its power in meter alone, especially when that meter is a ballad. Almost no one can successfully write a ballad anymore, as it has become the sound of a child’s song. We like it, but it cannot be taken seriously.

In his collage manifesto Reality Hunger, David Shields asserts that each great work creates and destroys a genre. That is what Shields is doing when he suggests the impending rise of nonfiction and the lyric essay over the novel. Shields says of his manifesto, “People will either love or hate this book. Its converts will see it as a rallying cry; its detractors will view it as an occasion for defending the status quo. It is certain to be one of the most controversial and talked-about books of the year.” I’d say Shields’ makes the same type of arrogant claims about our day as Wordsworth did in his. Sounds a bit like Wordsworth when he says, “I flattered myself that they who should be pleased with them read them with more than common pleasure: and on the other hand, I was well aware, that by those who should dislike them they would be read with more than common dislike” (560). Both artists expected that their departure from the traditions of a genre would have a polarizing effect, and deemed it a good thing. Both works declare generic change. Wordsworth helps us understand the ways in which he means to depart from the poetic conventions of his time and shape the movement of future poetry. But today we must depart in new ways.

I appreciate his idea that there is a contract between a poet and a reader, “The metre obeys certain laws, to which the Poet and Reader both willingly submit because they are certain, and because no interference is made by them with the passion but such as the concurring testimony of ages has shown to heighten and improve the pleasure which co-exists with it” (571). The meter idea is outdated, but the principle from which he derives it can be useful. The Poet must maintain some consistency so as to make sure the reader can acknowledge the genre, but then he must departs from it for interest (although I may have added to his thoughts with that last part). The only line that really drove me crazy was the one that suggests it is important for the Poet to be “treading on safe ground” (570). Art is risk and I believe that he is taking some risks in his poetry or this Preface would not be necessary. Artistic manifestos, which is what the Preface really is, are in their nature at least a little self-important.

In his broad assertions, Wordsworth falls into the same trap as Hegel. Hegel says that Romantic art is the best, yet he does not seem to account for the fact that his theory about history is very forward-looking toward future perfection. His satisfaction with the status quo suggests that he thought in some way that Romantic art was the self-consciousness that that constituted the ultimate perfection. In the same way, Wordsworth asserts that all good poetry will be like his. His aim is to shape the direction of poetry, redefine the genre for future artists. I admire this move, but I believe that his pendulum swing has become lost in the history of poetry and there are other great poets now who are the voice of a new time, which is by Hegel’s theory a superior artistic age than any that has come before, right?