KM: I am Kevin McLaughlin, a man from the 21st century well acquainted with your verse and your prose, particularly the Biographia Literaria. I write for a magazine, and while we are together, I would like to interview you. You are an honored poet.

 

STC: (snorting) I am? Then I am truly damned, more so than that creature with his albatross. My verse will endure the ages, even longer than the ordure of my critics! I once responded to a critic by saying, “I admit every poet is a fool, but you yourself may show it, that every fool is not a poet.” Let me state: people of humor are always in some degree people of genius, poets or fools.

 

KM: Poetry frequently conveys happiness. Do you stay mindful of this trait when you write?

 

STC: Yes, at all times. The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions — the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or a heartfelt compliment.

 

KM: You are indeed a romantic. Let me ask about one poem in particular. “Kubla Khan” during my school years was one of the first poems embraced by my generation.

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river ran

Through curtains measureless to man

Down to the sunless sea.

 

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girded round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills.

Where blossomed many an incense bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

 

STC: Why “Kubla Khan?” I never considered it one of my better pieces.

 

KM: In the late 1960s, the younger people discovered whole families of mind-expanding drugs, both natural and chemically manufactured. Your imagery and narratives perfectly suited the times. (I explained the hallucinatory effects of these drugs, describing LSD experiences had by friends.) This movement embraced hallucinations and what you describe as phantoms. I have a few standard questions I’d like to pose.

 

STC: I am willing.

 

KM: We will later address the definition of poetry. But what of the reader? Do they share some responsibility in the transmission of a poem?

 

STC: The reader always has some responsibility, especially if the poem is infused with the sacred. Readers may be divided into four classes: 1. Sponges, who absorb all they read, and return it in the same state, only a little dirtied. 2. Sandglasses, who retain nothing, and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through time. 3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they have read. 4. Mogul Diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also. I write for the Mogul Diamonds.

 

KM: What is the poet’s mission?

 

STC: Let me answer that question like this: No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. I believe that statement also addresses the definition of poetry.

 

The poet explains God to the people and their priests. He prayeth best who loveth best. And Poets are drawn to love in all its disguises. The poet explains, through Imagery, the physical world in a way that the scientist never will. What you call hallucinations, the poet calls phantoms, and they are just natural beings that cannot always be apprehended through the senses. Consider my “Fears in Solitude.”

 

When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve,

The level sunshine glimmers with green light.

O, ’tis a quiet spirit healing nook!

 

and

 

Remembering thee, O green and silent dell!

And grateful that by nature’s quietness

And solitary musings, all my heart

Is softened, and made worthy to indulge

Love and the thoughts that yearn for human kind.

 

I could not have written those lines without indulging in my well-known appetite for laudanum and opium, made the livelier by vast quantities of wine. When I was in my cups, I truly believed in human perfectability. Ho, in 1794, I formed a group I named pantisocracy. Twelve young couples formed a group that envisioned philosophic emigration to America. When this idealistic notion failed, I fell into a deep depression that caused me to enlist in the army, a short-lived adventure.

 

KM: Oddly enough, even though you were one of the founders of the Romantic Poets, few are familiar with your core beliefs. Can you summarize a few of them so my readers can better interpret your poems?

 

STC: I believe in the transformative power of the imagination. I can cast my mind off into distant obscurities, travel the universe through the sheer power of my mind. I can summon Roman Emperors, philosopher from Aristotle’s day. I can see God in a haystack or in a river.

 

My poetry is predicated on the sacred interplay of philosophy and piety. There is but a thin veil between the physical and the spirit realms. I pass through this veil throughout the day, frequently bringing back poetry fragments and themes.

 

An understanding of Nature is the only way a man may develop.  What do I mean by develop? I am referring to transcendence, rising above the pull of negativities, and glimpsing the divine. Being at one with God is the only worthy purpose of our existence. Otherwise, we are just animated corpses. This is the majority of humanity.

 

KM: Then you are a mystic?

 

STC: In my understanding of the word. It may have evolved into a different meaning throughout the centuries. Our world, including the definition of words, is characterized by impermanence. Impermanence is a tool of the poet.

 

KM: And what are your cherished causes?

 

STC: Ho, my 21st century friend. Here is where I am at odds with many. I relish a love of liberty, even if that liberty results in revolution. I encourage experiments in verse; poetry should never be static, I am a humanist who espouses simplicity of diction, and a fervent believer in what others call the Supernatural. Note how readily I accepted your manifesting at the quay.

 

KM: You are known for writing fragments, not complete poems.

 

STC: They are not fragments, as they were called by my critics. They are visions. Who would know me and my work need only read “Psyche.” Not one extraneous word, not one more word needed. I am well pleased you posed that subject. I believe, above all, in “Life Consciousness.” You will find that in “Psyche,” and in all my better works.

 

KM: I delight in asking this of poets. What is the definition of poetry? We debate that through to the 21st century.

 

STC: Poetry is the best words in the best order. The definition of poetry is ineffable. The poet’s work is naked in the daylight. The writer of fiction is well clothed and at a remove from his work. I applaud their use of the imagination, but all they are really doing is distracting the reader with story lines. And by the Rood, they expend thousands of printed words.

 

Let me digress. I am exceedingly fond of folktales and tales that have come down through the ages. Some call them fairy tales. I call them the truth.