SELECTED POEMS: COLERIDGE

This selection of Coleridge's poems rediscovers the poet as a Romantic Autobiographer of tremendous power and range, who can be read with ever-deeping delight. Richard Holmes's radical division of the poems into eight catergories of theme and genre casts a fresh light on the whole structure of Coleridge's work. It dispels the myth of the 'metaphysical dreamer' who wrote poetry only for a few ephemeral months of inspiration. At the heart are the Conversation Poems, a unified and beautifully crafted autobiographical sequence, composed over a period of twelve years. The volume also includes the little-known love poems to Asra, the robust Hill Walking Poems attention to previously undervalued later poetry born of restless old age and ironic reflection. 'A starlingly original book' -Andrew Motion, Guardian-