William Wordsworth

Selected Poetry of William Wordsworth (Modern Library Classics)
$12.95
Wordsworth's descriptions and comparisons are so vivid that you feel like you're in the setting to poem is striving to create. This is a truly remarkable example of fine poetry. Wordsworth commonly uses the rhyme scheme ABAB in his quatrains and AABCCB for his sestets. He writes quite a few of his poems in pastoral form, which a focus on nature, but not devoid of a rhyme scheme. The length of his poems vary greatly, ranging from 2-214 pages long! His one 214 page long poem is obviously the highlight of the book: "The Prelude, or Growth, of a Poet's Mind". It's an autobiographical poem divided into sections due to it's longevity. A few of his poems are controversial ("The Idiot Boy"?!), the vast majority are fantastic. The mere fact that he was able to write a 214 page autobiographical poem shows what a great poet he was. It's great to read such a fine example of poetry. Highly recommended.

Poetry for Young People: William Wordsworth
$14.95
Praise for books in the POETRY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE series...

"It is particularly heartening to come upon...The Poetry for Young People series [which] should be commended for recognizing that secure stepping stones hold infinitely more hope than forced marches."--Washington Post Book World

"Satisfies in every way."--School Library Journal

"Engaging...both informs and intrigues....The editors of these handsome collections...have chosen well, bringing together about 20 of each great poet's most accessible, compelling poems...The fullcolor paintings on each page are beautiful."--Booklist

"Nothing short of breathtaking."--Parents

They're perfect marriages of classic poetry and beautiful art!
Every breathtaking volume in this critically acclaimed, best-selling series features exquisite full-color illustrations that enhance each verse and a renowned scholar's guidance to help children understand and love poetry. Also included is an introduction to each poem, full annotations that define unfamiliar vocabulary, and fascinating biographical information.

Selected Poems
$13.00
As any fan of poetry will admit, Wordsworth is perhaps the central figure of poetry of the last two hundred years-- only Whitman contends with him in eminence. I love both (though I am partial to Keats!), and the fame of each is very just and in proportion with their merits.

Wordsworth is a musical poet, in that his verse flows with a beauty of language that has no rival I have yet encountered save perhaps Yeats or Shakespeare. Even the latter two, though better poets than Wordsworth overall in my opinion, fall slightly short of his music. I find many of his poems very easy to commit to memory, because of this quality:

She dwelt among th'untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove.
A maid whom there were none the praise
And very few to love.

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye--
Fair, as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and Oh!
The difference to me.

That is from memory, and I memorized it almost effortlessly; I suspect most can do the same because this poem (one of Wordsworth's "Lucy Poems", some of the best in all literature!) has a certain rhythm and flow to it that makes it as easily committed to memory as song lyrics.

There is in Wordsworth's poems a wonderful depth of thought, as well; common themes include lost youth, nature, and the poet's own mind (Wordsworth was notoriously egotistical). I find him a sadder poet than others do-- many read him as almost superficial or happy and joyous in nature, but I think this is too simplistic, as his poems resonate with a certain loss and regretful inwardness that really reverberates in my mind.

He is commonly considered the greatest of the Romantics, a consensus with which I disagree. I prefer Keats and Blake (Coleridge might have been as good, had he written more!), but Wordsworth has been more of an influence on later poets than either, and I certainly do not shy from calling him among the greatest.

William Wordsworth - The Major Works: including The Prelude (Oxford World's Classics)
$18.95
The comments have been about Wordsworth, not about the edition in question.

Potential purchasers should know that Stephen Gill has created a strange volume. Wordsworth lived to be 80, and revised his poetry all his life, leaving a Complete Works divided into thematic categories.

Most editors respect the rule of honoring the author's final intentions, so that a revised version of a poem is "what the author really meant."

Gill tosses that rule overboard, and in fact does exactly the opposite: his stated intent is to reprint the *earliest* version of any given poem. So, for instance, we get "The Ruined Cottage" as a work in itself, not as later incorporated into "The Excursion."

Also, less debatably, Gill arranges the poems in sequence of composition, the better for students to trace WW's development.

Why does Gill look to the earlier works? His explanation is that it goes along with the chronological sequence. Looking at a poem WW wrote in 1801, it does not help if we are reading revisions from 1835 or whenever.

But Gill has a better, unstated reason. LATE WORDSWORTH SUCKS. The man's revisions of his own work are almost never for the better, and the older poet's lack of inspiration is painfully evident.

If you want to give WW a fair shot -- if you want to understand what in his poetry blew people's minds and made him a giant of Romanticism -- then you gotta break the Textual Editing Rules, and you gotta read the poems as WW first wrote them, not as he later revised them.

This, therefore, is the edition to read.