A choice of Coleridge's verse

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ted Hughes (Editor)

Coleridge's flawed genius has fascinated people for almost 200 years. His greatest poems have a quality which sets them apart from - and perhaps above - those of even his most admired Romantic contemporaries. Yet they sit oddly, too, with the bulk of his own work, seeming to spring, if not from a different sensibility, then at least from a different state of mind. Here, Ted Hughes describes the psychological ordeal which produced the supreme utterances of 'Kubla Khan', 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and 'Christabel, Part One', and his choice gives us those poems in the company of others related to them. The result is a daring and radical attempt to get to the heart of Coleridge's spiritual and poetic concerns.

242 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1996

About the author

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as his major prose work Biographia Literaria.

Reviews

[Gijs Hollebosch · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? It must have made quite an impression when it was published. It reads like Pirates of the Carribean meets The Tell-Tale Heart by Poe. A grim classic piece of poetry!

I went for Kubla Kahn as well since it is part of this edition. I liked it more, a unfinished fragment means even more imagination is required from readers.