In class today, we talked about the fact that Coleridge's poetry is very self-consciously focused on the use of language, even though his poems are perhaps meant to be about nature or philosophy of sorts. It seems as though Coleridge has this desire to get out of his own mind and really feel what nature is all about like Wordsworth does, but he is unable to. The Norton anthology editors note that Coleridge had somewhat infamous shortcomings in his headnote. "Coleridge's friends... abetted by his own merciless self-judgment, set current the opinion, still common, that he was great in promise but not in performance... while his mind was incessantly active and fertile, he lacked application and staying power" (439). So, while Coleridge seems to have been rather obsessed with words themselves, he didn't believe that he could manage to get them on paper in the same way that many of his contemporaries did. He would just kind of put it all down, whether the work was awful or amazing (as Professor Oerlemans noted in class). It makes sense, then, that Coleridge's poetry exhibits a preoccupation with words because he was not necessarily able to get past that first hurdle and to the guts of whatever meaning he was trying to convey. He can't help but keep going back to what is truly troubling him: language itself.
In his poem, "Dejection: An Ode," Coleridge uses an excerpt from an old Scottish ballad as a jumping off point. The critic R.A. Benthall discusses this in his essay, "New Moons, Old Ballads, and Prophetic Dialogues in Coleridge's 'Dejection: An Ode.'" He contrasts Wordsworth's launching point of the senses with Coleridge's launchpad, language.
In his poem, "Dejection: An Ode," Coleridge uses an excerpt from an old Scottish ballad as a jumping off point. The critic R.A. Benthall discusses this in his essay, "New Moons, Old Ballads, and Prophetic Dialogues in Coleridge's 'Dejection: An Ode.'" He contrasts Wordsworth's launching point of the senses with Coleridge's launchpad, language.
The "Ballad of Sir Patrick Sense" perhaps gives Coleridge the sunlight and water that he needs to grow his own seeds of wisdom into a full-fledged work itself.
Here is a link to Benthall's article: New Moons, Old Ballads, and Prophetic Dialogues in Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode"
Here is a video reading of the "Ballad of Sir Patrick Spense":
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