Coleridge!

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We are are studyin' him this week, and I was shocked at how much I liked him. Shocked! I mean, I like the young flouncy Romantics, and all, but I don't normally have much time for The Big Important Epic-Writing Ones (Wordsworth, Blake, etc). And he's fantastic! The annotations and notebooks are totally fascinating, AND he's just a tremendous, tremdous poet, too. It seems.

I am enthused! Lets talk STC!

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Opium - classic or dud?

On the classic side, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Representing the dud side, Thomas de Quincy

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Search-The Rime of the Ancient Mariner w/ Gustave Dore illustrations
and "Frost at Midnight"

― Jocelyn (Jocelyn), Thursday, 13 May 2004 17:06 (twenty-one years ago)

I think it's been at least a century since someone felt the need to put an exclamation point after his name.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 13 May 2004 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm all for the enthusiasm.

― lauren (laurenp), Thursday, 13 May 2004 21:03 (twenty-one years ago)

The first two-thirds of 'Mariner' just completely blew me away. Completely. I think maybe it was the way my natural reaction of "patronising contempt at Long Dead Guy aiming at pathos oh my god this still works ugh wtf cool" mirrors the wedding guest's? The evocations of colour are what're most astounding me atm - I'm not even a visual person but they're so clear somehow, as if they were backed by some latent-ass synaesthesia? I get that with the pink in 'Faces on the Subway', too, but pretty much nothing else.

And yeah, Frost at Midnight is gorgeous!

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 13 May 2004 23:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Also the way he's constantly attracted to totality as if it equates with clarity reminds me a lot of Dickon! I am writin' a wanky essay at the moment abt how his unitarianism, via that, powers the HAWT LESBIAN ACTION in Christabel...

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 13 May 2004 23:42 (twenty-one years ago)

(lauren you are nice, thank you)

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 13 May 2004 23:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Hip-Hip Hooray for Mr. STC. I think my favorite of his "epics" must be "Christabel," closely followed by "Ancient Mariner" (maybe because I dig the albatross?).

Actually, I've been trying to get a friend turned on to STC - any suggestions for good starting poems?

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 14 May 2004 00:14 (twenty-one years ago)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner IS a good starting poem.
Others might be:
The Suicide's Argument
This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison
Kubla Khan
A Mathematical Problem
The Language of Birds (aka Answer to a Child's Question)

― Fred, Friday, 14 May 2004 12:39 (twenty-one years ago)

By the way Gustave Dore's illustrations to the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

― Fred, Friday, 14 May 2004 12:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Search: Kubla Khan, Frost at Midnight
Destroy: I would need to have my copy of Lyrical Ballads here to check. Though off the top of my head, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner could be a bit shorter don't you think, heh.

― Archel (Archel), Friday, 14 May 2004 14:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Fred, those are fantastic!

I love how Wordsworth blamed 'Mariner' for the poor sales of Lyrical Ballads, and insisted it went at the back in the second edition.

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Friday, 14 May 2004 14:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Thx Gregory. I love many STC poems, so I posted some a beginner might like :-D

― Fred (Fred), Friday, 14 May 2004 14:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Stop, Christian passer-by!—Stop, child of God,
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seemed he.
O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C;
That he who many a year with toil of breath
found death in life, may here find life in death!

(I don't much care for the rest:)

Mercy for praise—to be forgiven for fame
He asked, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same!

― donald, Friday, 14 May 2004 15:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Many thanks, Fred And Archel. Those are excellent starting points. Now I just need to sneak copies into his restroom reading stack.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 14 May 2004 19:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Has anyone here read Richard Holmes' Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772-1804 and Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1804-1834 biography of the great man? Am I insane to think that the two volumes will make excellent summer reading?

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 14 May 2004 19:44 (twenty-one years ago)

A footnote.

Coleridge turns up in Douglas Adams' Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. If anyone would care to explain the ending of this book to me, it would be appreciated.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Monday, 17 May 2004 07:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Another vote for Christabel - sexy vampire byatches in a gothic world? Feeling that!

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 10:54 (twenty-one years ago)

He's the patron saint of annotators, I love it that people would send him their books to be scribbled on (a thousand librarians cry in pain!).

― Margo, Sunday, 23 May 2004 01:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Instead of cross,
The legs of Ross...
-Confessions of an Ancient Mariner

― Fred (Fred), Sunday, 23 May 2004 07:33 (twenty-one years ago)

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