Preface to Lyrical Ballad - Wordsworth

• The poems were published in order to see how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement, a selection of real language of men in a state of vivid sensation that pleasure might be imparted which a poet hopes to impart
• He found that more were pleased than expected
• His friends hoped he would write the poems and if successful, would interest making permanently
• Since they did, his friends asked him to write a systematic defense of his theory on which the poems were written
• This defense is impossible because he didn't want to seem biased to his own poetry, not enough space, and he'd have to gauge the public's taste as either healthy or depraved, which would require an analysis of society's language and interactions
• The principle aim of his poetry is to choose incidents from common life and to communicate them with language really used by man and then to add some imagination - most of all, to make them interesting by tracing in them the primary laws of nature
• He feels that ordinary language best because those with rural occupations they convey their expressions simple and unelaborated words
• This language is far more philosophical than the kind used by poets who think they are conferring honor upon themselves by separating from the sympathies of men
• the subject is important and our minds are capable of being excited with gross and violent stimulants
• A man must have faint perception of its beauty & dignity who doesn't know this and further know, that one form is greater than the other.
• Today's society is littered with over stimulation - and to enlarge our capability for simple stimulation is the greatest role a writer can have
• Even though a poet is a man speaking to men, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm, & tenderness, who has greater knowledge of human nature, etc, his employment is in some degree mechanical, compared with the freedom & power of real,, substantial action and suffering.
• He references Aristotle as saying that poetry is the most philosophic of all writing; its object is truth-general & operative - the image of man and nature
• The knoledge both of the poet and the man of science is pleasure - the knowledge of the one ________________ to us as necessary for our existence; the other is a personal & individual acquisition, slow to arrive and by no direct sympathy connecting us with other human beings
• The goal of poetry is to produce excitement & pleasure, but too much excitement mimics an emotion that is an unusual & irregular state of the mind - so there is danger that excitement can be carried beyond its proper bands. The co-presence of something "regular" that the minds accustomed to can temper these emotions
• accurate taste in poetry is an acquired talent which can only be produced in thought and a long continued intercourse with the best models of composition.