Selected Poems

Resumen del libro

"Bloomsbury Poetry Classics" are selections from the work of some of our greatest poets. The series is aimed at the general reader rather than the specialist and carries no critical or explanatory apparatus. This can be found elsewhere.

In the series the poems introduce themselves, on an uncluttered page and in a format that is both attractive and convenient. The selections have been made by the distinguished poet, critic and biographer Ian Hamilton. William Wordsworth was born in 1770.

In 1798, with Coleridge, he published "Lyrical Ballads" and that work's famous preface is now taken as a key Romantic manifesto. In it Wordsworth argues for everyday subjects and an unornamented diction. Shortly after, in poems like "Resolution and Independence" and "Intimations of Immortality", a childlike responsiveness to Nature's moral teachings is proposed as an ideal.

Most of the poems of Wordsworth's great middle period are set in the Lake District, where he lived most of his adult life. In his youth, Wordsworth was a vehement republican (his ideas formed by early contact with the French Revolution) but with fame and middle-age he drifted gradually into the conservatism and self-parody that were much ridiculed in his later years. He died in 1850.

Biografía del autor

José María Valverde Pacheco fue uno de los intelectuales españoles más destacados del siglo XX. En palabras de Martín de Riquer, x{0026} x0201C;un escritor completo, un excelente poeta, excelente prosista, un crítico literario de gran agudeza y originalidad y un gran historiador de la literaturax{0026} x0201D;. En 1956, con veintinueve años, obtiene la cátedra de Estética en la Universidad de Barcelona. Colabora con Martín de Riquer en la elaboración de la obra Historia de la literatura universal (1957) y traduce a clásicos de las lenguas inglesa, alemana y griega como Rilke, Dickens, Cavafis, Whitman, y Faulkner. En 1964, tras renunciar a su cátedra por motivos políticos, se exilia, primero a Estados Unidos y después a Canadá, donde es catedrático de Literatura española en la Universidad de Trent. En 1976 se publica su traducción del Ulises de Joyce y al año siguiente se le reintegra su cátedra en España. Su obra ha merecido, entre otros, el Premio Nacional de Traducción y el Ciudad de Barcelona de poesía.