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 #24 The Tables Turned, An Evening Scene on the Same Subject by William Wordsworth
In this special episode I quote several passages from William Wordsworth's prefaces to the Lyrical Ballads and passages from C. Bradley Thompson's newest book "America's Revolutionary Mind."
My argument is that Wordsworth, in telling people to put away their books and look to Nature is reflecting a philosophical view from Isaac Newton and John Locke.
Up ! up ! my friend, and clear your looks,
Why all this toil and trouble ?
Up ! up ! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you’ll grow double.
There are times when we should put away our books. More importantly, there are dangers to only look in books for answers and not thinking for ourselves. Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads and elsewhere is desperately trying to get people to look at the reality of human nature and the greater Nature that man inhabits.
This is a lesson we need now more than ever, as we are turning our backs on Man, Nature and the Right morality for living on this earth.