Now I am going to analyse the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, by W. Wordsworth.

In the extract the poet expresses his idea about the subject of poetry, its language, the identity of the poet and the creatrive act of the poet.

The text starts with a declaration of intents where he says what kind of poetry the poet should write.

The subject of poetry should deal with incidents and situations from  common life, besides an easy language because language has to communicate in a straightforward way. Imagination should add quality to compositions: if the poet uses the "language really used by men", he will create an immediate image in people's minds. Poets should  use the colouring of imagination in order to make  ordinary things unusual and therefore interesting to the reader's mind: to make incidents and situations interesting you should present them under a new perspective.

But in Wordsworth's text you can find also find a contradiction. He says that the poet "is a man speaking to men", this means that he should use a "plainer and come emphatic language" while at the same time he says that poets are set apart from the rest of the mass because of their ability to feel deeply and to articulate their thoughts and feelings in a different way from ordinary people. So at first Wordsworth sets the poet in the same position of men, but then he says that he is superior. Another important feature of poets is that they have "a disposition to be affected more than other men by his absent things as if they were present. So the poet is able to recall a past situation because he is in great contact with the subjective reaction in front of situations. There is a close relationship between the poet and nature or the situation connected with nature. At the end of the Manifesto, the writer says that poetry takes its origin "from emotions recollected in tranquillity".

In conclusion Wordsworth thinks that poets should write with a very easy language because they speak to men, and that the poem is a form of literature that not all people are able to write.