A visionary poet and thinker, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the most influential forces of English romanticism. His classic narrative poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, tells the story of a seafarer condemned to lifelong penance for sooting a sacred albatros. This selection also includes four other poems that demonstrate the remarkable range of Coleridge's talent.

I last read this in high school, which has been a considerable amount of time, and following a documentary on the English Romantic poets the other day, thought it worth a revisit. I'm glad I did - still a remarkable story after 200 years. I wish the book had a least a brief intro or bio of Coleridge, and the other poems are middling at best, but the title Rime is well worth a read and a four star review. ( )

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is, I think, probably a work a lot more people have a sort of vague, second-hand familiarity with than have actually read it. Which is kind of a pity, because it's a fantastic little horror story, and one that's still very readable, two centuries and change after it was written.

This tiny volume from Penguin, published in 1995, also contains another long poem, "Christabel." This one's another story in verse, about a young woman who encounters what appears to be a lost waif in the woods, who bewitches her. It's an interesting tale, although not quite as much so as the Ancient Mariner's, but I found the ending disappointingly abrupt. I'm not sure what I was expecting from it, but it was definitely something more than that.

There are also four shorter poems: There's the unfinished "Kubla Khan," famous for the story of its creation and its rather vivid imagery. Also "Dejection: An Ode" which coveys the feelings and ideas it's going for well enough, but really wasn't to my taste, and "Frost at Midnight" and "The Nightingale," both of which were sort of warm and lovely, if not nearly as memorable as his most famous works. And, I'm afraid, if you're looking for a more in-depth analysis that that, you're looking at very much the wrong person, as I'm very much just an "I know what I like" type when it comes to poetry.

Rating: I'm giving the collection overall a 4/5, but the title poem itself gets another half-star and then some. ( )