Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ye olde classique:

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around :
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound !

ancient mariner = prototype interweb geek!!

STC = Ottery St. Mary bhey, possible tar barrel enthusiast (no evidence for this in his works).

Musical interpretation of TROTAM involving (amongst other things) variously water-filled milk bottles being tapped with spoons = best- forgotten school years experience.

the line "a mist, a mist, a shape, i wist!" and lots of HOAR FROST = classic. keats was better though *grumbles*

Search: Frost At Midnight ('quietly shining to the quiet moon' RAH) and Kubla Khan
Destroy: The Ancient Mariner (well YOU try having to learn it by heart aged 12)

Never mind blinking learning it, you try playing along with the darned thing using a milk bottle and a spoon.

Julien Temple (sic?) made a film about Wordsworth and Coleridge not too long ago (that, shamefully, I haven't seen). When publicising it he claimed that W & C were proto-punks because of their drug taking/rejection of highbrow artistic orthodoxy/middle-class delinquency/bohemian non-conformism/whatever. They may have been like that in their youth, but Wordsworth especially became staid and reactionary in his later years, inevitable really when you become Poet Laureate:

"I believe in this and it's been tested by research That he who f**ks nuns, will later join the church"

As an old poet once observed.

Re STC: I studied him at school but still love Kubla Khan -

"A savage place! as holy and enchancted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon lover!" ...

And the climax:

"And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise."

I like the idea of poet as seer/maniac and there's a strong vein of pantheism running through Coleridge's work that I'm also attracted to, but a lot of his stuff refers to obscure, classical references which go completely over my head and some of it is a bit twee for my liking.

haha julian temple!!: it was called PANDAEMONIUM btw, and the chances of it being good are slim surely? [insert anti-filth and fury rant here obv]

My English teacher told me that the difference between Wordsworth and Coleridge is that Wordsworth is crap and Coleridge isn't. The evidence she produced at the time to back up her argument, that naming somebody Betty Foy so it would rhyme with Idiot Boy was simply appalling, was shot to pieces when I met somebody whose surname actually *was* Foy. However, I still tend to agree with her on the crap/not crap thing.

ALBATROSS!!!!!

And what flavour will that b e sir?

Madchen is korrekt that Wordsworth = crap and COleridge isn't. PROOF is that of the "lyrical ballads" (which was supposed to be a collaboration but STC only ended up writing about 2 of them or something) they are all RUB except the STC ones, which are not quite a rub. i could not STAND the lyrical ballads and it is still a sore point with me that when i pointed out that they were possibly the most patronising and poorly-executed project in the history of English Lit. i was told (by my UNIVERSITY tutor no less) that i was wrong and clearly hadn't read them properly and to go back and read them again. learning how to think for myself MY ARSE ect ect...

Katie, you are entirely RIGHT. Although I would argue for clemency in the case of Tintern Abbey.

OK Archel. TBH i quite liked Tintern Abbey as well...

I often wonder how Dorothy Wordsworth didn't go mad and cantankerous much earlier in her life than she actually did. What with the combined nonsense of Wordsworth, Coleridge, De Quincey, Southey et al cluttering up her house for years on end... none of these men had a notion of what outstaying your welcome means.

this too is true and adds to my overall theory of Why Men Got To Do All The Art Or At Least Most Of It That We Know About (cf. Vanessa Bell, Carrington) it's cos they were always cooking and housekeeping for all the blinking MEN innit! people just descended on their houses and expected to be put up, fed etc. i get quite cross about it.

wasn't DW having hot sex with WW the whole time? perhaps this addled her judgment (cf jade and pj)

You are undercutting Katie's righteous (and I think to a large degree fully justified) anger, Mark S. For shame. ;-)

STC for me over Wordsworth when it comes down to it. I have a great reproduction of Dore's beautiful edition of "Ancient Mariner" that I treasure.

Is Douglas Adams's use of "Kubla Khan" in the first Dirk Gently book one of the best English-lit major in-jokes or not? (I say it is, but I would.)

M e too. I'm not too pleased with this poem in fact but it's relevant so...

Could you expand on the Douglas Copland thing Ned?

they were possibly the most patronising and poorly-executed project in the history of English Lit. i was told (by my UNIVERSITY tutor no less) that i was wrong and clearly hadn't read them properly

This is pretty much the official line on them where I teach. (That they are patronising to the Workers and to the Ladies, & not actually as original as the Preface makes out). I go along with it to an extent, but there are still interesting things to say about them.

Christabel was about lesbian vampires. This was good.

Could you expand on the Douglas Copland thing Ned?

Be amusing if it was Coupland. For two seconds.

Anyway -- a major plot point in the first Dirk Gently book comes up early on when it turns out that there's a second 'and much stranger' part to "Kubla Khan." Time travel, Porlock and more are involved (along with the death of humankind, maybe).

I heart Tintern Abbey.

tell me more! I've been to porlock many times, and I've searched in vain for the isolated farmhouse STC was staying in when he wrote KK. It's near the valley of Culbone, which is a very lovely place. The guy that runs the Culbone trust used to play the drums in a band that once supported the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band!

You learn something new etc. I'm off to the ILE bar.

tell me more!

Shan't. Trust me, just read the book, it's much more fun than me trying to summarize it.

STC absolutely destroys WW ("Resolution & Independence" is highly amusing, though (& gr8 LC parody!)). I still read "Kubla Khan" & "Rime Of The Ancient Mariner" aloud to myself for pleasure. Anyone read the Biographia Literaria?

What the hell, here's John Dolan's "Let Me Not Be Coleridge" which is about as good as any Coleridge vs Wordsworth FITE! poem as yr likely to find . . .

LET ME NOT BE COLERIDGE

Let me not be Coleridge. All the signs,
'His fatness was such his eyes were lost in it . . .'
That's Wordsworth's creepy familiar
of a sister writing
after Coleridge came back.
Wordsworth whom I've always hated,
on, I see now,
my ancestor's behalf.
Wordsworth the stolid, happy
in the long run,
Wordsworth with house full
of women adoring him, Wordsworth
the solvent, thin and stable;
Wordsworth the words'-worth
poetry entrepreneur,
never saying anything for free -
never saying anything,
but oh so well. Wordsworth with one tenth,
one ten-thousandth
Coleridge's talent . . .
'squandered', the inevitable addendum.
'He was now thirty-five,
most of the fire gone . . .'. God,
I'd barely gotten out of bed
at thirty-five! They warned me,
high-school guidance counsellors:
'wasted potential',
the great sin of the suburbs.
That and getting fat.
So I did both.
Those Coleridge genes,
better blame it on them. Instead of holding my
impetigo-pustuled unwashed puffy hands,
they should've told me the story
of how poor Coleridge howled
when he realized the Wordsworth
had cornered his market,
how one-tenth his talent,
wisely invested,
paid off quite splendidly
in the long run,
and all he, Coleridge, had coming
was a very messy
dragged-out death.
Gatsby's lists are no joke,
but an attempt to make possible
that second act
we're not supposed to get,
Americans.
I swear to God
- I swear to Michael Collins, better still,
who fought the Wordsworths of his day
and beat them all
and laughed while doing it:
I swear by Michael Collins,
I will walk eight miles
every day; I will write
five pages of eminently tame academic prose
every day; I will head home
with two books finished; I will walk
through Customs weighing 185;
I promise to take aspirin - without codeine, OK -
every night so my veins don't clog and pop.
That's the first step: not dying.
Not dying is important!
There's nothing ignoble -
I have to remember this -
there's nothing ignoble
about not wanting to die.
And Vitamin C,
so you don't shade and shrivel
like an apple slice.
n.b. Wordsworth walked ten miles a day
- in his Goretex parka
and his decaf, the bastard!
Not that I want to be Wordsworth; no,
as our war chief says,
'We must learn their ways,
not so that we become like them . . .'
(whole tribe grunts assent)
'. . . but so that we can overcome them,
keep our lands . . .'
(another angry grunt)
'. . . as our father-father,
Coleridge . . .'
(low moans)
'. . . failed to do.'

Nod, rise, and take up our weapons;
jokes and quiet,
between brothers. No hurrying;
this is not over yet, no matter what
the pious thieves may think!

'We will give these hymn-singing settlers
and their pious wife-sisters
something to sing about!'

Classic- "Yes, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea". And the Dirk Gently book too.

coleridge wrote about lesbian vampires and i enjoy lesbian vampites

I lived in Coleridge for 4 years. Embarrassment & too many in-jokes prevent me seeking out Grecians (= 6th Form) STC parodies written in his clothes.

You could be cheeky & love him for poems entitled To Lesbia & To A Young Ass, but I heart STC for lots, including (poss. because of tenuous connections) To The Moon In Autumn & Frost At Midnight.

God, a powerful attack of teenage nostalgia has been sparked. I must go for a walk in the fields, smaoke a fag & listen to Lohengrin, or Raw Power.