Question

Which sentence from the excerpt best expresses the writer's views on poetry?

Poetic language needs to maintain a balance between being ornate and plain.

Poetry simultaneously tells the truth and is fictitious.

Poetry exploits human experience to express truth.

Poetry subsists on reality and creates alternative realities

Answer 1

Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
by William Wordsworth (excerpt)

However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of a Poet, it is obvious, that, while he describes and imitates passions, his situation is altogether slavish and mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffering. So that it will be the wish of the Poet to bring his feelings near to those of the persons whose feelings he describes, nay, for short spaces of time perhaps, to let himself slip into an entire delusion, and even confound and identify his own feelings with theirs; modifying only the language which is thus suggested to him, by a consideration that he describes for a particular purpose, that of giving pleasure. Here, then, he will apply the principle …namely, that of selection; on this he will depend for removing what would otherwise be painful or disgusting in the passion; he will feel that there is no necessity to trick out or to elevate nature: and, the more industriously he applies this principle, the deeper will be his faith that no words, which his fancy or imagination can suggest, will be to be compared with those which are the emanations of reality and truth.

Answer 2

@carolina4567

Answer 3

C