Vision and Revision in the Manuscripts of William Wordsworth and W. B. Yeats

What happens when we consider the traditional, ‘Romantic’ notions of inspiration and imagination in the light of the often messy, chaotic traces of the creative process that we observe in a poet’s drafts and manuscripts? Although the archive may at first sight belie that there is such a thing as inspiration at all, Wim Van Mierlo contends that composition and inspiration are not simply each other’s opposite. Instead, he argues that inspiration and the imagination are very much integral to composition and revision. In discussing Wordsworth’s and Yeats’s composition methods—how they begin and complete their poems—he puts into question the perceived dichotomy between ‘first’ and ‘second thoughts’, original composition and revision. Adopting a cognitive perspective, he finds that there are no grounds to accept that revisions are somehow less inspired and creative. The creative economy at work in revision is no less the result of a ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’.