The Troubadour Podcast
"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
The Troubadour Podcast
Sunday Morning Poetry #5: Nutting by William Wordsworth.
For those familiar with Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, imagine for a moment what Roark's childhood might have been like. He talked a great deal about his love of the material world and, equally, his love of his own ability to transform that material as he saw fit.
I believe some of Wordsworth's poetry, particularly Nutting, illustrates a similar view.
In this simple poem, a young boy enters an unvisited nook in the woods. After appreciating and reveling in his own power, he suddenly and maniacally tears, rips and sullies the hazel nut bower.
In this discussion, I explain the importance of this poem, how it is emblematic of Romanticism and, most importantly, how the essential interest of Wordsworth was the development of consciousness--our faculty of awareness.