Tag Archives: poetry

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book recommendation: Mariner

I’ve just finished what will probably turn out to be my favorite book read in 2024. (I think it’s safe to make that prediction in mid-November.) I chose Malcolm Guite’s Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a possible book club option for the arts-focused life group we’re starting at church. I was excited about both the author and the subject matter. Malcolm Guite is a poet, scholar, rock band member, and Anglican priest. I’ve heard him read his own poetry in person and speak on some podcasts, and I like what he has to say (and his gravelly British voice) a lot. And of course, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the leaders of the English Romantic movement, both a brilliant Christian philosopher and a renowned poet, known especially for the haunting ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Guite’s book is both literary criticism and biography–an insightful analysis of the Rime and its famous gloss (explanatory notes Coleridge added later in his life), and a careful demonstration of how the text interweaves with the narrative of Coleridge’s own life, especially his tragic descent into opium addiction and eventual recovery. Even if you aren’t a poetry fan or don’t know anything about the English Romantics, you will enjoy this book if you believe nature speaks to us about God, if you like ghost stories and/or seafaring tales, or if you appreciate a great redemption story. You will be captivated both by Guite’s clear, beautiful prose and by Coleridge’s scintillating verse (quoted amply throughout the book–you don’t need to know it ahead of time) and fascinating letters and journals. It’s rare that I read a nonfiction book that I wished wouldn’t end, but this was one of them.

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a poem to share

Last week I received a beautiful, thick volume of Victorian poetry, published as a textbook in the 1960s, with excellent editorial notes and a fantastic breadth of coverage. My only complaint about the book is that it inexplicably omits one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins. I’ve always been under the impression that this was one of his best-known poems, so all I can guess is that either its omission was a mistake or the editor was tired of hearing it. I’m not tired of hearing it, so I’m going to share it with you here. This poem is in the public domain, and I obtained this text from the ever-helpful poets.org. (The accented syllables are meant to receive emphasis. Try reading this poem aloud; it’s even better that way!)

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;	
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells	
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's	
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;	
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:	        
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;	
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,	
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.	
 
Í say móre: the just man justices;	
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;	        
Acts in God's eye what in God’s eye he is—	
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,	
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his	
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.