  | Book Details Title: The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, the Wordsworths, and Their Year of Marvels |
Book DescriptionReview Named a Best Book of 2019 by The Guardian and The Sunday Times“[A] sublime, densely textured study . . . This is a book of wonders . . . Nicolson’s prose swoops and sings all over the landscape; his poets’ embeddings in nature and interconnections of thought are richly evoked, and his enjoyment of their (and his) journey into understanding is utterly infectious. Wordsworth and Coleridge, were they able to read his fabulous tribute in some Parnassian glade, would surely tip their hats to a kindred spirit.” ―John Walsh, The Times (London)”[A] spellbinding recreation of the making of Romantic poetry amid the Somerset Quantock Hills . . . The Making of Poetry is an excitingly new kind of literary book, one which artfully combines illustrations (the bright and powerful woodcut images by Tom Hammick offer haunting correspondences to Nicolson’s imaginative prose) with a naturalist’s approach to biography. The result, hard-earned in arduous daily walks through difficult terrain, often in savage weather, enables the writer to evoke as never before the regular pilgrimages of Wordsworth, Coleridge and their companions . . . one of the most imaginative and luminously intelligent books about poetry I have read.” ―Miranda Seymour, Financial Times“Nicolson, in the footsteps of Wordsworth, comes with his own Coleridge, the prodigiously gifted and colourful artist Tom Hammick, whose dreamy woodcuts and paintings are scattered through the narrative . . . poetry and place are perfectly braided together in prose whose biographical mood pays tribute to Richard Holmes and whose topographical fervour evokes Robert Macfarlane.” ―Robert McCrum, The Guardian“[A] captivating book . . . intensely moving and thrilling. There are meditations on dusk, rain, wind, the exciting darkness and strangeness of “winter power”; there are wonderful words like ‘rhyne’, ‘laminar’ and ‘haulms’ and brilliant readings of the poems, the lives and the temperaments of the two poets, feeling the spiritual ley lines running between our time and theirs.” ―Claire Harman, Evening Standard“Just as a Method actor immerses himself wholly in a role . . . to bring authenticity to his characters, Nicolson became something of a ‘Method poet’ to write this book . . . he absorbed the landscape that had embraced Coleridge and Wordsworth as if they were accompanying him, their eyes guiding his seeing . . . His beguiling language re-activates the spell of enchantment that compelled the Lake poets so long ago.” ―Liesl Schillinger, Air Mail“A fabulous book! Passionate, original, intensely personal, and thrillingly observant. Adam Nicolson has achieved a total immersion in the Romantic poets’ world, and I can’t think of any other study quite like it. It will have terrific impact. The combination of Nicolson’s fine nature writing through all the seasons, with his revealing use of local sources, and his own exquisite/patient close reading of the poets’ notebooks is completely captivating. It is also truly moving. Above all, he is fascinating on the central relationship between Coleridge and Wordsworth, the dark depths and emerging complications of that friendship: the rivalries and creative tensions it always contained, and the final sense of Wordsworth striding on alone into the Wye Valley.” ―Richard Holmes, author of The Age of Wonder Read more About the Author Adam Nicolson is the author of many books on history, travel, and the environment. He is the winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and the British Topography Prize, and lives at Sissinghust Castle in Kent. Read more Customers Review: Adam Nicolson takes on the role of English literature professor in “The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, the Wordsworths and Their Year of Marvels.”Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth and Wordworth’s sister, Dorothy, lived near each other in 1797-98 in the rural Quantock Hills in Somerset, England, a bit southwest of Bristol. It was a period that included the compositions of Coleridge’s “The Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan,” Wordworth’s “Tintern Abbey” and their collaborative “Lyrical Ballads.” In other words, this was a climax of English language poetry.The poets and Dorothy, who wrote a journal that is literature in its own right, often took nature walks in the pristine Quantock Hills, often at night, and often with a handful of visiting friends. Conversations during the walks often centered on philosophy and poetic theory.To write “The Making of Poetry,” Nicolson spent a year in the Quantock Hills himself, taking walks, too, and observing the changes of the seasons. With Nicolson part of the year was artist Tom Hammick, who made woodcut paintings for the book, using fallen timber from Alfoxden park where the Wordsworths lived, wood that likely were trees under which Coleridge and Wordsworth discuss their ideas of poetry.Nicolson’s text blends the historic contexts surrounding the poet’s lives, the politics surrounding the French Revolution and the war between England and France, with the state of literary thought and themes of that time.I read this book because of my own visit to the area in August 2019, on a tour of southern England and Wales. A long-ago English major myself, and having been questioned about “Tintern Abbey” during my 1981 oral master’s degree exam, I visited the abandoned Tintern Abbey monastery and then took a nature walk on the forested hills on the other side of the Wye River that is the Wales-England boundary. I actually became lost momentarily in the English forest, which was a wonderful feeling. A young couple hiking the same forest eventually led me back to the village of Tintern on the Wales side. Wordsworth’s poem, “Tintern Abbey,” is not about the abbey ruins, but about nature in the Wye River valley and the metaphysical way nature and memory become a single powerful force.Three days after the visit to Tintern, looking in on an Oxford bookstore, I saw a stack of Nicolson’s “The Making of Poetry,” that had been published in late May, and I decided this was a perfect book for me to read. I didn’t buy it there because we didn’t have room for a book in our luggage for the trip back home to Texas, but I ordered it after my return.Nicolson’s writing is enchanting. His prose description of the Quantock Hills sparkles with originality and poetic thought. His knowledge of the flora and fauna uncovers delightful insights into the area and the effects it must have had on Coleridge and Wordsworth.His interpretations of the poetic masterpieces are startling, reaching into nuance: “There is no simplicity in Coleridge. Behind every one of his statements and attitudes lie something like their opposites: the love of home conceals the dread of home; the love of self conceals the contempt for self; the love of others obscures distance from others; the love of his wife conceals a lust for others; the love of love may enshrine a fear of love.”I took in this book as if I were attending a class from “professor” Nicholson, each chapter equaling one class, one after another to fill a semester. Finishing it, I feel like I earned three more semester hours toward a literature degree. | |
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