Nostalgia, coming home, and the end of the poem: On reading William Wordsworth’s Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

Abstract

Reconsidering the functions of nostalgia during the reading of poems, this article argues that nostalgic longing may be a more creative and critical force than we often think it. As both are understood in our century, nostalgia can seem antithetical to critical reading. But time passes during reading, as well as between readings: the very shape of reading, processing from beginning to inevitable end, means something is always being left behind - something of which a poem’s marking of time through rhythm makes us particularly aware. Reading one almost definitively nostalgic poem by an equally definitively nostalgic poet - William Wordsworth’s Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood - the article explores what happens between the moment when a poem begins to speak and the moment it falls into silence. Focusing on some of the ways in which time is experienced while a poem is read, it argues for nostalgia as integral rather than detrimental to reading, with particular functions in relation to poetry worth our reconsideration.