Who is the best of the English Romantics, and why is it Wordsworth?

Who is the best of the English Romantics, and why is it Wordsworth?

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Because it just is. Shelley's next, but back a ways-
Meant to reread the 1805 Prelude again this summer but haven't yet. Still almost three weeks. Perhaps I'll finish up what I'm on and begin this week.

I have a question relating to Wordsworth. My first (and so far only) exposure to Wordsworth has been the Lyrical Ballads. I found that I loved Wordsworth but thought that Coleridge was painfully mediocre. Am I a pleb?

Blake's quite a bit better

This
Keats next for me

Well, if (you) like interpretive religious comic books, I suppose. But not if (you) prefer real life.

Coleridge is great for the Biographia and essay collections. He has a few 'canonical' poems, but he's not even remotely close to Wordsworth AS a poet. Nothing amiss here, user.

Because it isn't. Keats is king.

This or Shelley no question

>picks the tamest, dullest rhyme-artist of the lot
Literally any of them except Wordsworth. Romanticism is supposed to be dangerous.

This. Shelley is next best.

Listen up, faggots. I wouldn't expect you virgin pussies to understand the greatness of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (known to you plebians as Lord Byron) so I'll spell it out for you.

This guy was a player. Not like that Chad who cucked you once by fucking your oneitis' brains out, oh no. This guy would fuck your oneitis, your Mum, your sister, your Dad and probably you for good measure. Some of them would be at the same time. He was the last true Greek in any sense of the word, producing classic poetry whilst fucking boipussi and sluts alike.

This fucker gallivanted through Europe, fucking and writing and writing and fucking whatever and whomever he desired. He popularised Gothic literature, inspiring the two most important texts in the genre - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and John Polidori's The Vampyre. Without him, Victorian people would have been the biggest bunch of pussies. What else would they have read? Blake's ramblings about how awful industrialisation is? Wordsworth being a little bitch because nature is cool but also big and scary? Thank fuck Byron intervened and instead they read about a revenge-hungry, psychopathic monster tracking down and killing everything that makes this guy happy and noblemen fucking and sucking young sluts in creepy castles.

And he fucking loved animals. Not in an "omgggg I sooo need a pug, they're such cute deformities" way. In a "my dog is getting a mausoleum" way. Because Trinity College, Cambridge wouldn't let him keep his beloved dog with him, this motherfucker found a loophole and kept a bear. A. Fucking. Bear. Most of you pussies probably haven't even seen a bear, but this thing could have ripped off your arm and had it as a snack without a moments consideration. And bears were only the start of his collection, he also kept kept a fox, monkeys, an eagle, a crow, a falcon, peacocks, guinea hens, an Egyptian crane, a badger, geese, a heron, and a goat. He basically lived in a small-sized zoo.

So what did he do when he got bored? Oh, I don't know, join the fucking war for Greek independence.

So yeah, that's why Byron is the greatest of the English Romantics and you're all too pussy to recognise it.

>biographical criticism

...

Keats writes better poetry then Wordsworth and Coleridge. But check out John Clare too, for something more earthy.

>Romanticism is supposed to be dangerous....
user? Fucking Wordsworth pretty much invented Romanticism--

Place the Hyperion fragment side-by-side with the 1805 Prelude, read both, and say that again with a straight face. Keats wrote some beautiful odes, and I do love him, but he hadn't the time to compete sincerely. Wordsworth's only real competition is Shelley, whose great volume belies his relatively short residency.

I rate him just on the basis of Darkness, the apocalyptic poem.

poetryfoundation.org/poems/43825/darkness-56d222aeeee1b

Blake then keats

Blake easily, he's with Milton and Shakespeare as the greatest English writers

t. Stephen Dedalus

Different Keats poster here (). I've never been able to get into Wordsworth. I find his style to be weak and he seems to ramble on too much. I do like some of Shelley's work, though.

Keats' work feels contemplative, imaginative and vividly sensual. Aside from his 1819 Odes I would recommend The Eve of St. Agnes; some of his sonnets are brilliant, too. There are two unfinished Hyperion poems by him.

I enjoyed reading the (incomplete) Don Juan by Byron. His She Walks in Beauty is a classic lyric poem.

Lets not forget that his gardner found a skull, which Byron turned into a drinking cup.

Start not - nor deem my spirit fled:
In me behold the only skull,
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.

I lived, I loved, I quaff’d, like thee:
I died: let earth my bones resign;
Fill up - thou canst not injure me;
The worm hath fouler lips than thine.

Better to hold the sparkling grape,
Than nurse the earth-worm’s slimy brood;
And circle in the goblet’s shape
The drink of Gods, than reptile’s food.

Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
In aid of others’ let me shine;
And when, alas! our brains are gone,
What nobler substitute than wine?

Quaff while thou canst: another race,
When thou and thine, like me, are sped,
May rescue thee from earth’s embrace,
And rhyme and revel with the dead.

Why not? since through life’s little day
Our heads such sad effects produce;
Redeem’d from worms and wasting clay,
This chance is theirs, to be of use.

>never been able to get into Wordsworth
sounds like (you) haven't actually read him. But you've read Byron's Don Juan (great, but of a different order) and not read The Prelude(1805), which is in fact the greatest poem of the era, inclusive of both generations? Have (you) read any of the sonnets? the Intimations Ode? Tintern Abbey? Etc.?
Wordsworth addresses one DIRECTLY as a reader, he THEN to you NOW, and no other English Romantic really does this, not Keats, not Shelley, and certainly not turgidly autistic Blake, EXCEPT Byron, but his is with a cynicism and wit that Wilde (for instance) not only co-opts, but bests him at, along with a few other Edwardian blades like Beerbohm. But to Keats--
I mean I thoroughly enjoy reading poems like the Eve of St. Agnes, Isabella and the Pot of Basil, Lamia, and especially Sleep and Poetry. But there is NO WAY you can go through BOTH their works- both Keats' and Wordsworth's- and maintain the opinion (you) have now. No way! Come back after having read the Prelude and we'll talk. Like Don Juan it's a narrative bit and so remarkably easy to get through. And it's not even remotely 'boring.'

wordsworth. i always assumed that he wasn't as cool as keats or coleridge who drank/drugged themselves to death. harold bloom (obligatory) has a really interesting defense of wordsworth; by his understanding, wordsworth was the first english poet to internalize and reflect the everyday mysticism of nature, while he transferred human attitudes towards inanimate objects. also important was his mingling of prose and poetry in such a way that had not yet been done.

i'm not well-versed (hah) in poetry so don't crucify me on the particulars, but wordsworth was the beginning of modern poetry as we now know it.

*blocks your path*

I went back and read some of Wordsworth's poems to make sure I wasn't being somehow unfair. I'm still of much the same opinion as before. I probably won't read Prelude; if I don't like much of anything else he's written then reading an even longer work of his doesn't seem like it would bring me around, to be honest.

I just feel that Keats has a far greater intensity to his verse, but it's not like we have to like exactly the same thing. I don't care for Blake either, by the way.

>Melville
>English
Kek.

The guy literally has "words" in his name.

I love wordsworth...the ruined cottage is my favorite poem of all time

dont fuck with lord byron

>implying Blake's themes of innocence, experience, love, hatred and loss have no bearing on real life
Spotted the brainlet.

>let's just say 'forgetting' that these themes are rife in the whole of litetature, and not the exclusive property of some schizoid Swedenborgian.
Whatever, dumbfuck.

I love all the romantics. Though Coleridge may not be in the same league as Blake or Wordsworth, there's just something about his poetry, coupled with his own personal tragedies, which makes him my personal favourite.

Why do you insist on posting this (you) shit? It looks stupid

>blah blah blah
(you) have neither answer nor criticism. or do (you)? oh, except for the kind of shit one gets from an 8th grader. (you) old enough to be on this board, user?

>a fucking bear

The Prelude. Poems in Two Volumes.

My favorite part of Don Juan was the dedication to all Byron's haters. He wrote that Wordsworth should leave the Lakes and drown himself in the ocean and also that he should be baked into a pie. Throughout the text he keeps calling out Wordsworth by name and mentioning how much he sucks. Pretty good shit imo.

>(you) have neither answer nor criticism. or do (you)? oh, except for the kind of shit one gets from an 8th grader. (you) old enough to be on this board, user?
Jesus Christ you are very pretentious. He asked why you structure your posts in such a way that makes them difficult to read and you respond by calling him immature. It sounds like you are projecting.

"Mad, bad and dangerous to know..."

kek, was Byron the original shitposter?

I'd say de Sade was a good shitposter (literally). Marx would have also been extremely online but less focused on the silly stuff. Remember he spent a lot of time writing, academic in style, Navy Seal copypastas about Feuerbach and Stirner.

Byron could not exist in the world today. He could barely exist in Victorian times. The empires of the world modernized the world and wore down all the rough edges.

oops for some reason I read "American"
Guess I need to sleep

And yet it was perfectly answered in the comment that came before 'his' own. A disagreeing comment that made me think 'fair enough.' How do (you) explain that? And what do (you) suppose is being 'projected'?
Also, if (you) read the comment (you) defend again, i think youll find that what youre handing me is an interpretation of 'someone else's' inarticulate twaddle. Of course if it is your own, then youre pretending, and that's what 'pretentious' is.