A Review of ‘The Selected Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’

A Review of ‘The Selected Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’

There is always something immensely satisfying when reading the poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As one of the chief architects of the Romantic movement he deserves his place in the Canon, but beyond this his poems are terrific reads and journeys into the mind of a visionary. Like the ancient mariner Coleridge is able to hold the reader in a hypnotic act of hearing and seeing even nearly two hundred years after his death.

One of the brilliant aspects of Coleridge’s poetry is the degree of intensity and emotion lurking within it. This intensity is unrivalled in his contemporary Romantics; Shelley’s Ode to the Westwind and Keats’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci are beautiful highly wrought masterpieces but poems such as the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel seem to ooze emotion and menace. Poets, particularly the Romantics, have always written from their own inner reservoir of feeling, yet there is often a degree of detachment whereby the poet hides in the shadows of his poetic voice. With Coleridge we get the sense the poetic voice is his own voice, raw, anguished and honest. Coleridge is ‘the bright-eyed mariner’ just as he is Kubla Khan with his ‘flashing eyes and floating hair.’ Knowing this makes reading his work a thought-provoking experience. In contrast to the all empowering dread and fear encountered in his most famous masterpieces there are poems that display Coleridge’s sentimental side. There is a truthfulness and vulnerability in poems such as ‘Frost at Midnight’, and ‘Dejection: an Ode’ that make Coleridge endearing to the reader, we get a sense of not only the poem but the experience itself despite the distance of time and space. It is this emotional reality that is behind the words, unguarded and authentic, that makes Coleridge’s poetry truly great.

Coleridge’s poems are also treasure troves of meaning. Here we have poetry that contains hidden gems of ideas and influences, and language that moves and morphs, as it is being read. Coleridge’s famous collaborator and friend William Wordsworth wrote poetry depicting the natural world, and the meaning and significance was in the experience itself. For Coleridge scenes and experiences contain a hidden reality, characters and words, go beyond their literal meaning and point in other directions. Behind the shapeshifting language and narrative of his poems is a rich world of ideas which a reader can choose from as he sees fit. For example Rime of the Ancient Mariner can be read as a Christian tale of redemption or a gothic nightmare, Christabel can be a story of repressed female desires, or Demonic possession. The beauty of the work is that it often cannot settle on one frame, holes and gaps appear which disrupt the order. If the ancient mariner claims to have been redeemed by God then why is he still bound to his fate of confession, if Geraldine really is a demonic spirit, why does Christabel’s father Sir Leoline seem to be uncannily in collusion with her. Even in poems that seem more clear-cut we have hints of a personal world and experience beneath the most literal interpretation. In The Eolian Harp the harp is a symbol for the ‘one life’ and the unity of all things Coleridge believed in, but it is also a symbol for love and a yielding female body, ‘The Pangs of Sleep’ is a lament over the Coleridge’s own insomnia and night terrors but also hints at his underlying fear of persecution and pathological guilt. This elusiveness of meaning and use of symbols is one of the sublime aspects of Coleridge’s work and what makes it always relevant and rewarding to read.

This collection of poetry presents Coleridge at his best. We have his masterpieces including the The Rime of Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Kubla Khan and the ‘Conversation Poems,’ alongside these we have some of Coleridge’s more obscure and personal poems which shed light on his ideas and life. Acclaimed Coleridge biographer Richard Holmes editorial arrangement of poems according to theme, helps bring Coleridge’s work in sharp focus and we get a sense of who the man was. Reading Coleridge’s poetry is an enthralling journey into the deep recesses of the mind of one thegreatest poets of world literature. The emotion, still present and lingering, and the chameleon like language and ideas mean that Coleridge will be around for a long time to come.