Symposium, and: Coleridge’s Laundry, and: A Brief History of English Romanticism

Abstract

Symposium, and: Coleridge’s Laundry, and: A Brief History of English Romanticism Maxine Kumin (bio) Symposium Last call for the symposium at 4 p.m. to examine the works of W. H. Auden whom I remember always in carpet slippers. X from Hum. 101 will discuss the early poems, Y from Eng. 323 will discuss the later poems in the symposium that opens at 4 p.m. Spender famously said, Poor Auden; soonwe’ll have to take off his face and iron it to see who he is Perhaps he had bunions, thus the carpet slippers. [End Page 11] Lord Byron, Faustus, Yeats, September 11939, these poems should head the list of works discussed in the symposium at 4 p.m. which will reaffirm the poet’s place in the pantheon: wittier than Eliot, more readable than Pound, both too erudite to read in carpet slippers but knowing how all the instruments can disagree and cleverest hopes expire, let us revere his pleated face in the symposium at 4 p.m. while I revisit him on stage in carpet slippers. Coleridge’s Laundry I wanted to talk about Coleridge who was anything but handsome and was always leaving his wife to walk amazing distances for conversations with his pals: Poole, Lamb, Wordsworth, et al. I said, so what if the Pantisocratic ideal was just another hippie utopia where everyone labored by hand in the morning and studied or wrote in the afternoon? So what if the project conceived in poverty went down [End Page 12] in unexpected endowments, the Lannans and MacArthurs of their day? I wanted to read about laudanum: how many drops at bedtime and did he add them to water or tea or something stronger. When I closed my book I fell asleep as instantly as if I’d downed 50 drops in two fingers of scotch straight up. In my dream this poem was given a communion wafer and a blood transfusion. I woke with baked cotton on my tongue. My pulse was vigorous, my heart was with Sara, the mountain of laundry, her always absent Coleridge. Domesticity and migraines, miles and miles on foot. [End Page 13] A Brief History of English Romanticism How chaste was it? Does it matter? Did ever a poet have such a sister? It’s true that he gave her the ring to wear all day the day before his wedding which she didn’t attend for fear of drenching the ceremony with tears. For seven years she’d had him to herself, her only William, without a murmur she’d gone with him to settle his finances on “Mme Williams” who’d been his mistress, and the child he’d never seen, nine-year-old adorable Caroline. I love that they all bathed together that day, a make-believe family on the beach at Calais. And later, the rift with Coleridge, by then a goner— to think two men who’d been closer than blood brothers could break up over poetry and years go by in icy formalities. . . . Well, two of my brothers died unreconciled though neither was addicted, merely livid with rage at the other. At least Will and Sam closed lovingly despite the wrack of laudanum and even though Christabel, Part Two never got written and William’s few [End Page 14] late poems didn’t add much to his oeuvre nothing could detract from that first creative surge side by side those months in the Quantock hill and I’ll never forget how Coleridge walked 40 miles to meet Wordsworth, the very beginning of this story that leads us back into the title: A Brief History. . . . Maxine Kumin Maxine Kumin’s sixteenth poetry collection, Still to Mow, is available from W. W. Norton. Her latest children’s book, Mites to Mastodons, is available from Houghton Mifflin. She has been the recipient of the Pulitzer and Ruth Lilly poetry prizes, the Poet’s Prize, and the Robert Frost Medal. She and her husband live on a farm in Warner, New Hampshire. Copyright © 2007 University of Nebraska Press