I was privileged to read several lyrics by Coleridge this past Thursday as part of the University of Mary Washington’s venerable “Thursday Poems” series. The idea is simple: gather on Thursday afternoon to hear someone read thirty minutes worth of poetry. No lectures, minimal commentary, mostly just great verse. My colleague and mentor Bill Kemp (of Kemp Symposium fame) started the series several years ago. For my money, it was a great accomplishment. My colleague (and fellow music- and poetry-lover) Eric Lorentzen has kept the tradition going with panache, and with deep devotion.

Coleridge’s poetry can be difficult to read, and certainly difficult to take in on one listen. I’m not sure how intelligible I make it in my reading here. I gave it my best shot, aiming for a climax with “Kubla Khan,” one of my favorite lyric poems, and then a graceful close with the beautiful “Frost At Midnight,” also a favorite of long standing.

I got through “Kubla Khan,” only a little disappointed by the fact that my timing was off and I didn’t have the minutes I needed to read the prose at the beginning of the poem, a story of a forgotten dream that I’m convinced is an utter fiction, indeed part of the poem itself. But never mind: “Kubla Khan” does just fine in its traditional form, and I had a great time reading it. Then I turned to “Frost At Midnight”–and encountered a huge surprise.

I had not read that poem aloud in public for decades, probably not since I was an undergraduate. I’d read it to myself many times since, and of course had read bits of it aloud here and there when I taught it, but not the whole thing, aloud, in public. As I read, I found the pent-up yearning inside the poet as he recalls his lonely boyhood got more and more intense inside my own spirit. The poet thinks of the longing he felt as he watched that film of ash on the grate, the fluttering “stranger” that portended a visit from … someone, and as I read the lines I felt something welling up inside me, too–an expectancy, a grief, an overwhelming hopefulness.

The scene in his memory ends The poet turns to look at his child who is lying in the cradle at his side. “Dear Babe,” the section begins. And as I read those two small words, I was overcome. I struggled through the rest of the lyric, unwilling to let it stop, and at times unable to keep it going.

I’ve decided to podcast the reading pretty much as it happened. You’ll hear a long pause at one point, and you’ll hear the evident emotion as I try to continue. I do make it to the end.

I worried a little about the people in the room, that they would think something was wrong with me, or my family, or otherwise. But there was nothing wrong. There was simply beauty, and love, all the way through. My thanks to STC for giving us this wonderful gift, this poem called “Frost At Midnight.”

I’ve turned off comments on this post. If you enjoyed the reading, please go read some Coleridge for yourself. There’s more where this came from.

And may all seasons be sweet to thee.

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