The Albatross Curse, Bad Weddings and Lots of Opium: Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Secret Life of Books

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - the name of a classic song by Iron Maiden AND a decent-ish poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It’s the latter that’s under the microscope in this episode.

Written in 1798, in a haze of opium smoke and revolutionary fervor, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a long ballad poem describing the supernatural curse against a sailor who shoots an albatross. There’s a ghost ship, angelic spirits, a zombie crew and many unforgettable lines, including ‘water, water everywhere nor any a drop to drink’.

In this episode Sophie and Jonty look at the road to Rime, following Coleridge’s flirtation with anarchism, friendship with William Wordsworth and a particularly unpleasant case of diarrhoea. In so doing, he wrote some of the greatest poems about fatherhood ever (Frost at Midnight) and the orgasmic Kubla Khan.

Sophie does a pretty good job of explaining the complexity of poetical meter in this deceptively simple poem, while Jonty commiserates with Coleridge’s travails as a fellow mouth-breather.
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