The Poetics of Disappointment: Wordsworth to AshberyUniversity of Virginia Press, 1999 |
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Page xi
... regards itself as having grossly overestimated its power and significance , and it loses ontological status in its own eyes : it seems to itself a mediocre thing and is at a loss to know how to employ its remaining energies of thought ...
... regards itself as having grossly overestimated its power and significance , and it loses ontological status in its own eyes : it seems to itself a mediocre thing and is at a loss to know how to employ its remaining energies of thought ...
Page xiii
... regard , while the second depends on slighting the distinction between the poet as poet , who may enjoy or profit from his or her success , and the poet as person , whose plight is unrelieved by poetic achievement . In his essays on ...
... regard , while the second depends on slighting the distinction between the poet as poet , who may enjoy or profit from his or her success , and the poet as person , whose plight is unrelieved by poetic achievement . In his essays on ...
Page 3
... regard . As Coleridge's " joy " constituted an overflowing of narcissistic excitement ( " We in ourselves rejoice ! / And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight " ) , so his present demoralization follows from the decay of the ...
... regard . As Coleridge's " joy " constituted an overflowing of narcissistic excitement ( " We in ourselves rejoice ! / And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight " ) , so his present demoralization follows from the decay of the ...
Page 5
... regard itself as posthumous omitted from history , confined to itself : No voice divine the storm allayed , No light propitious shone , When , snatched from all effectual aid , We perished , each alone . But I beneath a rougher sea ...
... regard itself as posthumous omitted from history , confined to itself : No voice divine the storm allayed , No light propitious shone , When , snatched from all effectual aid , We perished , each alone . But I beneath a rougher sea ...
Page 7
... regard . The aggrieved indignation in Byron's dis- illusionment sets it apart from the harried perplexity of Coleridge and Cowper's disappointment . Disillusionment maintains an assurance of authority and an enraged attitude about the ...
... regard . The aggrieved indignation in Byron's dis- illusionment sets it apart from the harried perplexity of Coleridge and Cowper's disappointment . Disillusionment maintains an assurance of authority and an enraged attitude about the ...
Contents
9 | |
A Love in Desolation Masked | 66 |
Last Thoughts of the Unfinished Thinker | 95 |
The Soul Is Not a Soul | 136 |
Afterword | 171 |
Bibliography | 191 |
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Common terms and phrases
ambition Ashbery Ashbery's Auroras Auroras of Autumn become Bloom canto Coleridge consolation crisis lyric describes desire desolation despair destiny disap disillusionment dream elegiac emotional empty existential experience failure family romance fantasy fate feeling finds first-person Freud frustration Gray's grief Harmonium Harold Bloom heart hope human humiliation Ibid idealization illusion imagination impasse inner intellectual Intimations Ode John Ashbery Kierkegaard late lyrics late poems LAURA QUINNEY Lerici lines loss lost Magnetic Lady means melancholia ment mind mother mourning narcissism narcissistic nature nostalgia object one's ontological pain pathos poem's poems of disappointment poetic poetry poets pointment portrays present Prometheus Unbound promise psychological representation represents rhetoric romantic romanticism sadness self-conception self-consciousness Self-Portrait self's sense Shelley Shelley's solipsism sonnet sorrow soul speaker spirit stanza Stevens's suffering takes teleology theme things thought Tintern Abbey tion transcendent Triumph turn Vendler Wallace Stevens Wordsworth Wordsworth and Coleridge
Popular passages
Page 40 - In darkness, and amid the many shapes Of joyless day-light; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart, How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee O sylvan Wye!
Page 23 - In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire : The birds in vain their amorous descant join, Or cheerful fields resume their green attire. These ears, alas ! for other notes repine ; A different object do these eyes require ; My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine ; And in my breast the imperfect joys expire...
Page 3 - There was a time when, though my path was rough, This joy within me dallied with distress, And all misfortunes were but as the stuff Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness : For hope grew round me, like the twining vine.
Page 50 - The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose; The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
Page 41 - Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains ; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear, — both what they half create, And what perceive ; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.
Page 72 - If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable!
Page 84 - Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are ; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear...
Page 51 - Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be ; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.
Page 38 - Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration...
Page 49 - I hear! —But there's a Tree, of many one, A single Field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The Pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?