Poetry and imagination

The extract by Coleridge affirms that during the years when Coleridge and Wordsworth were neighbours, they often discuss about poetry.

They agreed that the two cardinal points of poetry were:

• 1) its power of exciting the sympathy of the reader
• 2) its power of giving the interest of novelty.

The first power could be obtained by a faithful adherence to the truth of Nature, the second by the modifying colours of imagination.

They also came into their mind the idea of composing two source of poems.

• A- poems where the incidents and agents were to be in part supernatural.
• B- Poems where subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life.

The first kind of poems should describe events which were supernatural as if they were real, the second kind should describe ordinary things and by the modifying colours of imagination of the "inward eye" (imagination) presented them in an unusual aspects.

These ideas were basic for the production of Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge's task was oriented towards people and characters supernatural while Wordsworth's was to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday.

To do this Coleridge was to elicit a semblance of truth by a "willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith" . And Wordsworth had to awake the mind's attention to "the lethargy of custom" and direct it to the wonders of the world. All that can only happen to "people who can see and feel".

The poet is then described as he who "brings the whole soul of men in activity" and diffuses a tone and spirit of unity.