[New-Poetry] Wordsworth at Tintern Abbey

[Skip Fox]

“Tinturn Abbey” is another Greater Romantic Lyric. The piece pretends to be
written in the present, goes from mild observation to a heightened energetic
state of meditation, back to a milder phase of observation, then up one last
time to the highest meditative state. Sometimes they end, as Coleridge’s
“Frost at Midnight,” falling ½ back into a state of lower energy combining
observation and meditation. Right to associate with other poetry from a
prominence, and that goes back to the Hill Poets of the 18th century. Braced
by the new psychological awareness that the mind works in associative
strings, these poets’ narrators climbed hills in their poems and then
described the grand landscapes they saw below. Interesting poems. All
pretended to be written on the spot like “Tintern Abbey.” As was Arnold’s
“Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” another poem of ascent. I think it was
the Romanic belief that the unfrettered associative mind in conjunction with
the world has itself aesthetic benefit. Later Ginsberg wrote, “Mind is
shapely,” I think giving voice to the same thing. Of course, the stance was
_as though_ it was improvised. As “Tintern Abbey.” 

 

Presumptively improvisational poetry, one which alludes to its own immediate
nature, is very interesting. You’d think that Whitman would have relished in
it, but he didn’t much (“by these tears made a boy again”). Ginsberg and
Antin probably do the “real thing,” more or less. Who else?

 

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of JforJames at aol.com
Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2007 8:30 PM
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Wordsworth at Tintern Abbey

 

In a message dated 7/13/2007 3:25:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
chris.lott at gmail.com writes:

Thanks for the link. I love that poem... it was one of the
centerpieces in a time that really got me interested in poetry.

Chris, I would go so far as saying that anyone who doesn't love that poem
doesn't know what poetry is.

 

Another of my Wordsworth essentials is "Composed Upon Westminister Bridge."
Lots of analogs for it in contemporary poetry. Standing above a scene and
taking it in, with the filter of poetic insight. Wordsworth's nice outward
turn at the end, "And all that mighty heart is lying still." 

 

Finnegan





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