Poet’s Corner: Wordsworth’s Preface 2

24 July 2026

(4 September 2015) We remind our readers that last week we began looking at Wordsworth’s ‘poetic manifest,’ added, without Coleridge’s knowledge or permission, to the second edition of their “Lyrical Ballads,” in which he defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” written in the language of common man. This week, we move on to Wordsworth’s attempt to define a poet; he calls him “a man speaking to men,” who is “endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind,” in short, someone who has a gift of understanding and stronger emotions than average. Also, the poet takes “delight[ in] contemplat[ing] similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and [is] habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.” The poet observes life as it happens around him, creating an emotional impression of them, and later composing them into verse.

How does he perform this action? Wordsworth reminds us that he “said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins. . . .” Thus, to create this kind of poetry, the poet meditates on the incident, filling his mind with it, until the original emotion surfaces, in other words, the moment in which he finds himself vividly reliving the incident. In this emotional state, the poet begins to compose, with his focus on recapturing in words and lines said emotion and its related incident.

Speaking for myself as poet, this description of Wordsworth accurately describes my own process, especially since most of my poems are narrative in nature, telling a story of an incident from the past, and how that incident made me feel, striving to convey something of the emotions felt. The Victorians and Modernists both repudiated this notion, prefer to eliminate emotion from their poetry, and in the case of the Victorians, make it more realistic, while the Modernists moved to something more abstract. We will look at both of these movements later. In the meantime, come back Monday and we will look at Coleridge’s answer to Wordsworth’s “Preface,” how he saw their Romantic project. Good reading!