Acknowledgments

Some years have passed since I last looked at the facsimile copy of the 1798 first edition of Lyrical Ballads. I recall its elegant and austere physical presence though: lots of white space on the pages, text neatly centered above the page numbers, the words almost floating from the page to the eye. A title announces itself with little fuss, and, oddly, no author’s name appears. I think the name of the press and the year are printed—and that’s it regarding acknowledgments.

In the second edition, published in 1800 (or 1802?--my books are packed away for now), Wordsworth is credited as the author (though Coleridge wrote several pieces, too), and the famous Preface adds contextual density. These two different versions of Lyrical Ballads have always inspired my curiosity because of the tension that evolved in Wordsworth and Coleridge during those intervening years between the first and second editions. The anonymous 1798 version presents itself with raw freshness and separation: it makes a dramatic break with the past and announces a new vision in the work of anonymous authors. A reader that year (there were few), if they did not know the writers, would encounter a lovely and inviting book, and yet it was accompanied without the legitimizing apparatus of names, associations, or relationships beyond the poems therein.

By 1800, Wordsworth acts to legitimize the claims his poetry has made by providing a contextual statement that announces a new poetics. A very different book arrives, then, in readers’ hands. A name locates the writing with an individual, while the preface argues for a new methodology of a poetics that is rooted in the experience of that individual, and in his ability to relate it in words. By the time Wordsworth died in 1850, he was practically an institution of England.

I have been compelled by the young work of Coleridge and Wordsworth because of its radical sense of departure from convention toward the exploration of their appetites of knowledge and vision that accompany their radical invention in language. I like thinking of them through Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals, walking between Stowey and Alfoxden (if I have those details right), observing the landscape, getting caught in the rain, loafing in fields. The more staid and stately versions of themselves they aimed for later in life—once the terror of the French Revolution was at hand—is depressing. Wordsworth embraces the machinery of legitimation, stiffening his upper lip on his way to the Lake District while Coleridge gulps opium, abandons a family, ships out, only to return, weirdly institutionalized himself as the grand old patriarch of British letters, despite his kooky addiction and airs. And yet, something wild arises in his writing even late, and I like to think of his invisible presence in the early editions of Lyrical Ballads.

I bring this up because I posted a knee-jerk reaction recently to Jason Guriel’s post over at Harriet, the details of which are recorded in the comments section there. His words rubbed me the wrong way, I think, because of this tension between anonymity and legitimacy, and the contextual realization of the poem along that A-L axis. I like to think that poems should provide all a reader’s needs. They persuade us by their particular textures and concerns, and by poetry's ability to influence our belief and desires.

But I know this is bullshit, too. The first thing I do with a new book is read the blurbs, the name of the press, year and city of publication, author bio, and, of course, the acknowledgments page. This provides rhetorical texture and context that I can’t help but want. I do think that this apparatus serves a number of functions based on the needs for legitimacy and the ambitions of the author and publisher. I like the way some authors, however, contextualize their own sense of community rather than annotating their publication history in a long list of important presses, etc, and I find the awards aspect of things to interfere with this sense of community I’m talking about.

An example of a kind of acknowledgments page that I find particularly useful can be found in Rodrigo Toscano’s new book, Collapsible Poetics Theater. This was a National Poetry Series winning book from 2007, only recently published, but what I find compelling is, in addition to the usual list of magazines where individual poems appeared (Ecopoetics, Jubilat, Cross Cultural Poetics (XCP), etc), Toscano provides a list of names of people for whom “Collapsible Poetics Theater would not be possible,” including Tom Orange, John Beer, Leonard Schwartz, Kristin Prevallet, and probably one hundred others. Adding to this list, Toscano extends gratitude to his co-workers at the Labor Institute, adding yet anther contextual layer through which to read his book. While I think we could argue over how this influences the reading of his work, Toscano follows an impulse that he shares with Wordsworth—to want to help direct readers through his writing by outlining a community of writers and activists who share affinities with his project. And yet I wonder, too, what the experience of reading this book would be like without the apparatus that legitimizes, not Toscano’s career, but his ambition, concerns, and drives as a poet?

Anyway, I should acknowledge my thanks to Jason for bringing this up--so thanks!