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'Some poets and critics have claimed that there is no distinction at an between the language of poetry and prose. That claim may lend aid and comfort to readers and writers who see many twenty-first-century unrhymed open poems only as wilfully chopped-up prose in language that is remote from earlier verse-practice. Wordsworth raised similar critical hackles when he claimed to write poetry in simple ballad forms, couched in the real language of men. He didn't write anything of the sort in much of his verse: save for some ballads and lyrics written in language approaching the directness of children's and peasants' speech, much of his philosophical, political, and religious verse is noteworthy for toning-down some of the hackneyed poeticisms that passed for conventional badges of late-eighteenth-century poetry. If he took chances with language that, according to acidulous critics, sometimes led him to reproduce children's babble, his sense of decorum also prompted him to attribute to non-genteel characters a language they never spoke.' (Introduction)
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Last amended 5 May 2020 09:46:39
426-442
How Poetry Lines Up
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