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xby
05-19-2004, 09:39 AM
what is your favourite poem or poet in English romantic period?

ben
05-25-2004, 10:03 AM
Good question. I like Wordsworth and Keats, although i really should read more of them, especially Wordsworth as I've only read a handful of his works. Bought his selected poems the other day though so it's one for the future!

Keats' Ode to a Nightingale is probably my favourite work.

emily655321
05-25-2004, 03:28 PM
Definitely not Shelley.
(LoL I don't know why I'm so mean to him. :p I just can't stand him.)

I think Wordsworth is great, but I can only take the nature poems in small doses. I begin to find them a tad irksome; his talent for descriptive language is so great, it seems like he's just phoning it in when he goes on about flowers or the moon. Too easy. I like it when he gets into his own psyche (although not particularly that poem :p). The descriptions have greater depth; they feel richer to me. Lots of levels and corners and doors to explore.

For some reason I'm a little embarrassed to admit I have a real soft spot for Byron (especially "There's Not a Joy the World Can Give"). Not as bubble-gum fluffy as Shelley (*locks Shelley in a box with many spiders*), but still more MTV-catchy-pop than his contemporaries. Pretty superficial and straightforward; not a lot of layers to analyze at all. Still, I like how easily his personality comes through the lines, like he's sitting there talking to you casually. Especially in his more depressed or morbid poems, his bitterly ironic wit is revealed. I likes it. :D

xby
05-26-2004, 08:00 AM
I've found that so many friends in this forum appreciate Wordsworth. :blush:
My dissertation for the bachelor this year is about him.

My thesis is to probe the ecological facts in wordsworth's works. For I know, wordsworth is the one of the greatest romantic poets who's closest to the Nature. Today, when we read his works , we can feel his sense of preserving environments which always reminds me of the work Walden by Thoreau(it's now defined as eco-literature).

Eco-literature is a very new genre which is prevailing in Europe. Last year it has been introdeced in China by the first time. So I am not so familiar with it. But I think I chose it as my project is significant.


Can you give me some advice or information? Thank you! For I know there are many expert here! :angel: :wave:

ajoe
05-27-2004, 12:17 PM
Who's my favorite poet? Hmm... I'm yet to appreciate poems. I know poets who are supposedly great (Tennyson, Byrons, etc) but I can never understand them. :|

atiguhya padma
05-27-2004, 12:58 PM
Keats is pretty good at times. Shelley is probably the best of the Romantics in terms of his politics. Coleridge I would consider to be the most creative and stimulating. Byron was humourous at times, but his irresponsibly hedonistic and pretentious attitude is a bit too much to stomach at times. Wordsworth is too twee as I have said before.

As for a favourite poem, if you can call Prometheus Bound a poem, then it would be that for me. If not, then I would probably go for Ozymandias or some of Keats or Shelley's Odes, West Wind, Grecian Urn, Nightingale, Skylark etc

Isagel
06-17-2004, 09:07 AM
Blake is one of the romantic poets as well , isnīt he? For some reason I have seldom heard about him when people discuss the romantic period.

My favorite poem by Blake is Augeries of innocence. It is a very long poem, and almost more like a flow of thoughts. I do not know if you have read it, so Iīll quote a small part of it, you can find the rest here at online-literature. I do not know so much about Eco literature, but Blake wrote a lot about the relationship between nature, man and God. Perhaps this can be of interest for you, xby?

Love , Isagel

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state. "

emily655321
06-17-2004, 02:55 PM
I love that poem! :D Thanks for posting, Isagel, I forgot all about it.

Miranda
06-17-2004, 06:31 PM
I have to give more thought to this but wondered if it would help XBY for you to read 'Home at Grasmere' by Dorothy and William Wordsworth (Penguin Classics - edited by Colette Clark) This are extracts from Dorothy (William's sister) Wordsworth's journals and tell of their daily lives which involves long walks around the lakes where they live. In parts it details the poems that William is actually writing at the time - it's really interesting just as a diary, but linked to a study of Wordsworth's poems, it shows how his daily life impacts on the way he writes about nature.

trismegistus
06-17-2004, 10:35 PM
Blake is one of the romantic poets as well , isnīt he? For some reason I have seldom heard about him when people discuss the romantic period.

There are a couple of problems with lumping him in with the Romantics, not least of which is that he doesn't feel the attachment to nature that the Romantics did. He really was too wrapped up in his own personal theology/philosophy to fit comfortably into anybody else's framework. You can see his influence on the thinking of WW and the others who followed, but IMO he's much more a transitional poet between the Age of Reason and the Romantics.

Isagel
06-19-2004, 07:22 AM
Thank you for helping me sorting that out.

Still, there are a lot of nature themes in Blakes poetry. What do you think is the greatest difference between his way of using those themes, compared to the thinking of WW and the others?

In my opinion the nature in Blakes poetry is more like metaphors and religious images. Blake doesnīt paint landscapes with words like WW.

Koa
06-19-2004, 11:53 AM
Emily, leave my Percy alone!
-Mary Shelley

I'm sure there's some Romantic I love, and it's not Blake nor Wordsworth... But I don't know the others much...so...who the hell he is...

Oh wait I just got it... Coleridge! Does he count? I love the Ancient Mariner's thingy!!!

trismegistus
06-19-2004, 10:47 PM
In my opinion the nature in Blakes poetry is more like metaphors and religious images. Blake doesnīt paint landscapes with words like WW.

That's exactly it. He was never interested in nature for its own sake, but as a means of discussing his philosophy. Poems like "The Lamb," "The Tiger," and your segment from "Auguries of Innocence" concern ideas (mostly what he felt were false ideas) about God. Natural forms are the topics of the poems; the subjects are something quite different.

As a mystic, Blake's real concern was with the inner world not the outer: "I do not behold the outward creation... it is a hindrance and not action."


Koa: Coleridge is one of the English Romantics.

emily655321
06-21-2004, 06:59 PM
Perfectly put, Tris.

And yes, isn't Coleridge in fact considered the Father of the Romantics? I know he was Byron's idol.

trismegistus
06-21-2004, 11:09 PM
And yes, isn't Coleridge in fact considered the Father of the Romantics?

Dunno about that. You'd be better served asking someone who's a bigger fan of his work. Seems to me if there is such a title it should be shared between WW and STC. They wrote Literary Ballads together and that's really the work that's generally used to define the opening of the Romantic movement.

trismegistus
06-21-2004, 11:11 PM
I love the Ancient Mariner's thingy!!!

May I say that this statement is just plain wroooooong! :brow:

atiguhya padma
06-22-2004, 04:57 AM
I think it would be rather contentious to consider Coleridge as the Father of the Romantics. Nearly all the Romantics considered Chatterton to be their natural precursor, and the German Romantic movement, if I recall correctly, was well in place before Coleridge hit the scene. Goethe and Schiller both had significant works of Romanticism published before Coleridge.

Koa
06-22-2004, 08:42 AM
May I say that this statement is just plain wroooooong! :brow:

:confused: :blush: Tell me it's not what I'm thinking...:blush: