Murder Ballads: Exhuming the Body Buried Beneath Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads

By David John Brennan

In 1798, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were engaged in a top secret experiment. This was not, as many assume, the creation of a book of poetry. A book emerged, to be sure-the landmark Lyrical Ballads. But in Murder Ballads, David John Brennan posits that the two poets were in fact pursuing far different ends: to birth from their poems a singular, idealized Poet.Despite their success, such Frankensteinian pursuits proved rife with consequence for the men. Doubts and questions plagued them: What does it mean to be a poet if your work is not your own? Who is best fit to lay claim to a parcel of poetic property that was collaboratively crafted and bequeathed to a fictitious Poet? How does one kill a Poet born of one's own hand?Blending critical examination with jocular playlets-in-verse featuring the authors of the two books in baffled conversation, Murder Ballads reopens a 200-year-old cold case that never received a proper investigation: Who was the first true Author of Lyrical Ballads, and how exactly did he die?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0692734627
• ISBN13: 9780692734629
• Release Date: June 2016
• Publisher: Punctum Books
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.0" x 8.0"