Why read The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth?

Book cover of The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth

Book description

With an Introduction by Antonia Till.

William Wordsworth (1771-1850) is the foremost of the English Romantic poets. He was much influenced by the events of the French Revolution in his youth, and he deliberately broke away from the artificial diction of the Augustan and neo-classical tradition of the eighteenth…

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The French Revolution

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Poetry

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jesse Wolfe

Author

I love Wordsworth’s poetry (and his comments on the creative process) for its beauty and its importance to the history of the art form. His best poems—especially Tintern Abbey and his Intimations or Immortality Ode—tell psychological and spiritual tales about the gains and losses of growing up, and the role that nature can play in a person’s maturation.

His Preface to Lyrical Ballads lays out a Romantic program for poetry that has been hugely influential for two centuries. Wordsworth’s idea that poetry comes from “emotion recollected in tranquility” and captures the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” encapsulates how, for…

From Jesse's list on The best and most beautiful poetry about personal growth and spiritual questing.