[lbo-talk] Dialogue with the Past (was Liberfals)

[Carrol Cox]

On 6/1/2011 5:32 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Jun 1, 2011, at 6:29 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
>
>    
>> Even Milton... not a particularly anxious
>> guy, I would have said.
>>      
> Of course not. He's the big strongman of the canon. It's the ephebes that are anxious.
>
> Doug
>    
Wordsworth? As it turned out, he had reason to be anxious, as his poetry 
hit bottom after about 1805. But in the Prelude of 1805 or any of the 
major poems up to that point, he seems pretty confident. And with 
reason; even knowing the later flatness does not reveal any evidence of 
the flatness around the corner.

I came to the Prelude late. (I had read it several times but it never 
'lit up' for me. But when I read it again about 6 or 7 years ago, it 
enthralled me. The poem 'lives up' to its echo of the last lines of PL.

Carrol