Wordsworth Response

I felt that the reading experience was different over different versions. Specifically, the online versions felt somehow less authentic than the printed versions. The manuscript versions, however, also felt incorrect because they seemed unofficial, lacking the authority of a printed text. The printed editions and manuscripts also gave a sense of context – sometimes only that there was a context of other pieces in which this poem was situated rather than specifically showing that context. The online version from the Poetry Foundation offered a great deal of context-creating potential, but I still felt there that the poem was isolated. The Wordsworth Trust situated the context before the text of the poem, and I found myself reading it as I scrolled down to the poem’s text. The online versions seemed to be pushing towards a specific reading f the poem, especially with the Poetry Foundation’s audio clip of the poem. I also noticed the gradual revelation of the structure of the poem visually online. The break in the poem to a new column of text separated the content in a different way in different editions. Online, the entire poem was not immediately visible whereas in print it generally was. One print edition did split the poem between pages, which seemed disruptive but also enabled the poem to be placed in very close proximity physically to the pieces surrounding it. All of these aspects came together for me to indicate different foci for the reader, although whether these would be deliberately chosen on the part of the reader or an unsought result of the editor/publisher’s choices would likely vary.