ures of poetry and/or to a manifesto of the future of very poetry worthy of the name.
Wordsworth's discussion of the poet's relationship to the materials of poetry in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads declares the poetic text to be a departure from previous wisdom regarding the comportment and presentation of poetry as deriving from something approximating a rarefied poetic realm. The decision to "choose incidents and situations from common life" (40) is presented as a decision for closeness to nature and the "elementary feelings" of the rustic, which Wordsworth implies have been refined out of the prospective readership of Lyrical Ballads. In effect, Wordsworth argues, poetry, more exactly "what is usually called poetic diction" (45), has become so artificial and overblown that it is divorced from human experience. In justifying poetic treatment of the personalities, environment, and subjects of everyday life, Wordsworth implicitly criticizes the poetic sensibility o
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