I've been reading these essays, over and over again, for the past few months. They're beautiful, brilliant, and re-ignite the imaginative beauty of the Lake Poets. These are ideas I'll be revisiting throughout the next few months and beyond. 

The tone is open and inquisitive, building intelligent dialogue with the poets, poetry and culture. Although Fulford only focuses on three poets (Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth), he weaves other major and minor poets in the conversation throughout the three distinct parts of this book of essays. Fulford has selected certain works from each poet to discuss in relation to the poet's life, but does also focus on the development of the poets themselves, as seen through their work. He challenges the often detrimental perspective of looking at the poets (of any time period, really) as creators of a single aesthetic, looking instead at how they shaped and were being shaped by their careers and all that's attached to that concept. His analysis is wide-ranging, from grammatical or syntactical, to historical, to simply being aware of the presence of commercial constraints, art, seeing, and the weight of the heritage these poets held on their shoulders, even if from their own earlier works.

I've been mulling over Wordsworth in particular as of late, and don't remember much from Southey or Coleridge, aside from them being beautiful and in-depth and thought-provoking - as seen through the many underlined sentences and furious scribbles in the margins. I just love this book.