Coleridge's Conversation Poems - The Complete Collection

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Description

"Coleridge’s Conversation Poems – The Complete Collection" features all eight of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poems dubbed ‘conversation poems’ by George McLean Harper. The poems included in the collection are The Eolian Harp (1796), Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement (1796), This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison (1797), Frost at Midnight (1798), Fears in Solitude (1798), The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem (1798), Dejection: An Ode (1802) and To a Gentleman (To William Wordsworth) (1817). The collection explores themes of love and marriage, human nature and external nature, faith and God, and poetic inspiration. This book is the ideal gift for lovers of English poetry and the Lake Poets, and should not be missed by those interested in Romanticism.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 –1834) was an English poet and literary critic and is considered a founder of the Romantic movement alongside William Wordsworth and Robert Southey. His work is well-known for its reflections on nature and human relationships to each other, the world and God. Other famous examples of his work include Kubla Khan (1817) and his critical essays and lectures on William Shakespeare. Read & Co.’s Ragged Hand imprint is proud to be publishing a high-quality pocketbook as part of the Remembering Series, and hope fans of Coleridge will enjoy the complete collection of the Conversation Poems.

Sujets

• Irish
• English
• Poetry
• European
• Welsh
• Scottish

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 20 octobre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528792684
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

COLERIDGE'S CONVERSATION POEMS
THE COMPLETE COLLECTION
By
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE



Copyright © 2021 Ragged Hand
This edition is published by Ragged Hand, an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk




Contents
INTRODUCTION
THE EOLIAN HARP
REFLECTIONS ON HAVING LEFT A PLACE OF RETIREMENT
THIS LIME-TREE BOWER MY PRISON
FROST AT MIDNIGHT
FEARS IN SOLITUDE
THE NIGHTINGALE
A CONVERSATIONAL POEM
DEJECTION: AN ODE
TO A GENTLEMAN
(TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH)
BIBLIOGRAPHY


INTRODUCTION
The Conversation Poems are a collection of eight poems penned by English Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written between 1795 and 1807. In 1928, George McLean Harper coined the term ‘conversation poems’ in reference to a selection of eight of Coleridge’s poems that followed a similar form. He borrowed the term from the poem of The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem, written in 1798. The poems in the collection lack strict form, with each written in blank verse. Blank verse poems do not rhyme, but Coleridge guides the reader in which syllables should be stressed, often dividing sentences across multiple lines and therefore providing the poems with structure and rhythm. This results in what can be perceived as a written conversation or soliloquy.
The Conversation Poems are all highly personal and draw from emotional, first-hand experiences in the English poet’s life. The earliest poem in the collection, The Eolian Harp, Coleridge began writing , on 20th August 1795, whilst engaged to Sara Fricker. He was visiting the house in Clevedon that would become his and Fricker’s marital home. The poem was originally published in 1796 under the title ‘Effusion 35, Written at Cleveden’ in Poems on Various Subjects, but Coleridge edited it numerous times after the first publication. At the centre of the poem is an instrument that produces music when touched by the wind. Coleridge uses this image as a metaphor for the three main strands of conversation. Firstly, alluding to the physically intimate aspects of marriage, the poem’s speaker compares the wind’s caress of the harp to a ‘coy maid half yielding to her lover’. The music is then used as a symbolic representation of poetic inspiration. The speaker compares the breeze playing the harp to the ‘uncalled and undetained’ thoughts that nature stirs in him, referring to his own brain as ‘indolent and passive’. Finally, the harp is highlighted as symbolising all nature and living things, whilst the speaker compares the wind to God, implying that the natural world comes alive according to God’s command. In this, Coleridge also contemplates the ‘one intellectual breeze’ being at the soul of all things and, therefore, God being at the soul of all nature.
Coleridge and Fricker married in the autumn of 1795, and the poet then left their Clevedon home to travel England. He met with various writers, theorists and philosophers, but worried for his pregnant wife’s health and regularly wrote home during this time. The poem, Reflections on Entering into Active Life, published in October 1796, is similar to The Eolian Harp ’s exploration of Coleridge’s feelings at the time of his arrival in Clevedon, with Reflections exploring the poet’s feelings at having to leave his home. The speaker compares Clevedon to the Garden of Eden and feels closest to God when enveloped in the cottage’s natural surroundings. The struggle to choose between the contemplative life in the scenic environment and the dutiful life that waits for him beyond reflects Coleridge’s personal battle between his life as a philosopher and his life as a poet. Despite attempting to find success as a philosopher, Coleridge failed to take that path, and in Reflections, the speaker leaves the Edenic state to join humanity and fulfil his duty.
During the summer of 1797, Coleridge and his wife were staying with members of the Lake Poets, including William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and Thomas Poole. The group went on an outing leaving Coleridge alone at Poole’s property due to a foot injury. Coleridge wrote This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison during this time of seclusion in his favourite position on Poole’s land under a lime tree. Continuing to explore the Conversation Poems’ theme of humanity’s connection to nature, This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison features themes of loneliness and solitude. The speaker attempts to place himself in the environment Coleridge’s friends would be surrounded by on their walk and compares their nature-inspired position to his own lonely one. These themes of solitude are highlighted by the image of a ‘solitary humble-bee’ which flies past the lime tree whilst doing its duty to the natural world. The bee is used to symbolise Coleridge continuing to work and finding a connection to nature despite the absence of his friends.
Following the birth of their first child in 1796, Coleridge penned the poem, Frost at Midnight - one that is often seen as the best of the collection . The poem expresses hope that his son will experience a childhood that he could not. He used his own childhood experiences, referencing them in a negative light to further stress the importance of being raised in the countryside, further emphasising his hope that his son will have a better upbringing and be at one with nature. Via the fluttering ash from the speaker’s ‘low-burnt fire’, the poem explores the supernatural and unknown, which are themes often featured in Gothic fiction.
In April 1798, fears of a French invasion began to rumble through Britain. During this time, Coleridge returned to his childhood home in Ottery, visited William and Dorothy Wordsworth and composed Fears in Solitude . The poem was published alongside Frost at Midnight in Fears in Solitude in 1798 and shares similar gothic themes. Despite Coleridge’s feelings of opposition to the British government, he expresses a patriotic protectiveness of the British people, his family and the English countryside in the poem. He explores his opinion that humans should be in unity with one another and nature, and allows the poem to highlight his fears of what damage an invasion may do to this unity.
Coleridge wrote another of his most loved poems, The Nightingale at the same time as Fears in Solitude. It was published in Coleridge and Wordsworth’s seminal poetry collection Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The poem displays the gothic elements highlighted in Fears in Solitude , perhaps as a result of the fear of invasion being so prominent at the time. Nightingales are commonly used as a symbol of melancholy due to the Greek myth of Philomena - the princess of Athens was raped and mutilated by her brother-in-law before being transformed into a nightingale. Coleridge disputes this melancholic connotation of nightingales in the poem and instead presents the idea that the bird’s song is joyous and represents the true experience of nature.
In 1802, Coleridge and his wife were struggling with their relationship and the poet was living separately from his family.
Dejection: An Ode was originally entitled ‘Letter to Sara Hutchinson’, and was written in letter form expressing Coleridge’s intimate feelings for a woman who was not his wife. The title was altered, and the mentions of Hutchinson were removed when the poem was published in the October edition of The Morning Post in 1802.