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
SMP #12: The Nightingale by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
It is said that Coleridge's greatest achievement was William Wordsworth. There is some truth to this. But he was also a great poet in his own right. In Lyrical Ballads he and Wordsworth changed English sensibilities (and American) completely. While Wordsworth was the greater poet, Coleridge was the greater philosopher. It is Coleridge's insights as a critic which encapsulates English Romanticism.
In this poem published in 1798, he not only conveys a new style of sensualness but also critiques the literarati before him. It is a truly Literary poem in that it is very aware of the literature that came prior.
The Nightingale opens with Colerdge painting a picture of a nighttime scene with friends. They sit on a "mossy bridge," where they will think on nature. Then, almost on cue, "the Nightingale begins its song." This bird causes him to reflect on the writers of yore. Men who wrote that the nightingale's song was a melancholy one. To which Coleridge replies "A melancholy bird? Oh idle thought!"
He goes on to convey a completely different way to approach our experience of knowledge, learning, nature and literature.
If you have ever wanted to truly experience the grandeur of nature and man in nature, this is a good poem to get you started.