Wordsworth's Preface

In the his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth begins by explaining why he is compelled to write a preface to the new edition of his book by his “Friend.” The reasoning being that because himself and Coleridge have come together and received unexpected notice from the public, he must now situate himself and his philosophy for poetry. When I read this, I found myself wondering about Wordsworth’s might also have been self-conscious about his “experiment” that he produced and felt compelled to articulate his experiment further after his initial notice. Later when I read that he also argued that poetry must situate itself as poetry that speaks to the common language and experience of the current world. He writes that poetry must “endeavor to produce or enlarge this capability” to include the “accumulation of men in cities” and avoid the elevated parts of his predecessors. This revision of poetry at large also seems to advocate for listening and observing humanity’s need to “follow the fluxes and refluxes of the mind when agitated by the great and simple affections of our nature” (176). This, to me, seems to also explain why in this edition, he needs to follow his preface with the poems we discussed last time, “Expostulation and Reply,” “The Tables Turned…,” “Animal Tranquillity & Decay, a Sketch,” and “The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman.” Following his preface, and based on our discussion from last time, these poems seem to support his argument that poetry should not only be about observing, but also about expanding to include real human concerns. The previous poems that ask us to listen and imagine, are also asking us to imagine the “Indian Woman.” Of course, he allows us to also consider imagination and nature, but to expand on nature. Nature is not limited to “nature;” it also includes the nature of people and it’s other environs. These, he ends, are the object of his experiment--to imagine a larger scope of what poetry is capable of doing in evoking a sense of the complexity of the natural world. His use of the word object seems to signify “goal,” but also seems to suggest the container in which the poem exists. The final thought I’m left with, of course, is whether or not he succeeds and whether the poem can ever fully encapsulate experience? In some sense, I already feel he’s succeeded at pushing the envelope, but I’m curious to know if the same is true for the book when thought not only as a collection of poems, but as a book.