The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth — Volume 2 (of 8)

William Wordsworth fundamentally changed what poetry could be. In this second volume of his collected works, he proves why: these are poems written by a man who believed the humble stuff of everyday life, the potter wandering country roads, the river valley remembered from childhood, deserved the highest art. "Tintern Abbey" stands as one of the English language's greatest arguments for how landscape becomes soul, how the raw stuff of nature teaches us to feel and remember and become who we are. Meanwhile, "Peter Bell" offers a wilder experiment: a rough-edged narrative about a lawless craftsman whose heart eventually yields to something softer. The volume also includes Wordsworth's own prefaces, the manifestos that essentially launched the Romantic movement. Here is where he argues for poetry written in "the real language of men," about "the elementary feelings of pleasure," in scenes any person might recognize. This is the poet who taught English literature to find the sublime in a daffodil, a mountain, a child's face. For anyone who wants to understand where modern poetry began, and why it still matters, this volume is a good place to start.