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Poetry was, and continues to be, the thorn in my literary side. For many years, verse and rhyme poked at me, guarding themselves from my attempts to understand. So I kept the world of poetry at arms length. They seemed to offer me confusion in the place of benefit.
The words iamb and trochee crashed around in my ears during my university poetry course. Even the mention of poems flooded my mind with images of Petrarchan sonnets and archaic language. When I could muster enough attention, the mechanics of poetry complicated things.
The most enjoyment I found in poetry came from Homer’s The Odyssey and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which, for a lazy reader, can be read similar to novels. I was surprised then, when I came across Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Beginning their jointly published Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge and William Wordsworth wrote in their preface:
The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men; and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination
The truism ruling my mind was poetry felt too poetic; it concerned at the same time matters unimportant, or much too important for me. Reading these words, my opposition to poetry met its first challenge. According to Romantics, the good poem must extend an invitation for the reader to enter the dance. The focus is on the everyday. The only qualifier is they share the same “coloring of imagination.”
For Coleridge, imagination was an acquired taste. Following the death of his father, he found himself a schoolboy in London as a rambunctious, young child. An exceptional scholar, his schoolmates still described him as lonely and wistful.
Coleridge spent many years as a political radical. Always in the midst of action, he spent years under the noise and disturbances of London. In 1795, Coleridge met Wordsworth and in the encounter, changed his poetic style. His work reflected “situations from common life” and his tone grew more relaxed.
Leaving London, he relocated to rural life. Coleridge’s move to Nether Stowey accompanied the period of his changing tone. The young poet found refuge from the pressure of city life within the small village. He was free to experience nature—the consuming subject of Romantic poetry. The move was, in many ways, the result of his fascination with the new world presented by Wordsworth. His cottage is also where he first introduces his readers to the frost.
My excitement from the preface fueled my study of Coleridge’s poems. When I arrived at “Frost at Midnight”—I heard the verses as if they were describing my journey through the collection of poems:
The frost performs its secret ministry, unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry came loud—and hark, again! Loud as before”
The city boy is now relating his move to the countryside. Wordsworth writes of his friend Coleridge, “thou, my Friend! Wert reared in the great City, ‘mid far other scenes,” speaking of his upbringing in London. The poet is accustomed to life in the city. He relates the process by which he grew accustomed to the natural world—expressed by the cold of the frost.
Frost is chilling and harsh, usually not associated with the realm of poetry. Still, Coleridge is a preacher of its ministry. Reading Coleridge, I understand we share the bond of allowing what is unfamiliar to captivate and overtake—I learn to lean in to the secret ministry of the frost as I wrestle with a new poem.
In spite of (and maybe because of) my initial difficulty in reading poetry, I allowed myself to be drawn in by the poems in the Lyrical Ballads. The world of poetry opened. That which was previously foreign and even distasteful became an object of pleasure.
‘Tis calm indeed! So calm, that it disturbs and vexes meditation with its strange and extreme silentness.
The cottage where he lives in Nether Stowey is new and unfamiliar. The cry of the owl seems louder than in the streets of London. There is too much time to think and there is not enough noise to fill his mind. The poet steps into life in nature, into a new setting—to find discomfort. But the discomfort doesn’t seem to bother. Rather, Coleridge celebrates the vexation and the strangeness. Central to the ministry of the frost, then, lies difficulty. The reward of intimacy with what was previously foreign can only come about through a harrowing process. This explains my affinity for the Romantics and Coleridge. My initial efforts in the realm of poetry disturbed and vexed; Coleridge offered comradery with his experience with the ministry of the frost.
My first poetic breakthrough was understanding the difference between iambic and trochaic meter. With a pen in hand, I drew dashes and dots above the lines in William Blake’s “The Lamb” to show stressed syllables. I chose a corner in the library to assure no one would see me violently mouthing “little lamb” and protruding a finger with each syllable. I shouted when, at last, I correctly identified Blake’s meter.
The practice was my frost. Uninviting and unfamiliar—the exercise somehow became a ministry. Difficulty which once challenged now intrigued. The poet wrestled with his new environment, seeking only to turn discomfort to peace. Following his example, I hurried into memorizing various rhyme schemes and mastering new poetic vocabulary. Enjambment, spondee, volta.
My feet were planted in unfamiliar terrain, only to discover a fresh vitality, and growing enjoyment of verse and rhyme.
Today, Coleridge and his poems draw from me the consent to feel—rather than to understand. His reminder is to step into new terrain—encouraging me to tackle the metaphysics of John Donne and even the disjointed work of Ezra Pound. I must dismantle the mental trap where it is so very easy to place poems, and surrender to a willingness to not understand. The invitation from “Frost at Midnight” is not to explain, but to experience.
“Frost at Midnight” is addressed to Coleridge’s son, Harley. The frost performs its secret ministry, says Coleridge, and so wonderful is this ministry that he shares it with an infant who can neither understand or respond. The ministry is communal. He calls the daring boldness out of his son as Wordsworth called it out of him.
But thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breeze by lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Harley roams breezily through sandy shores and lakes, unfamiliar to his father, Samuel. He connects with ease to the ancient mountain, skipping the disquiet with which the poet arrived at Nether Stowey. This is where the poem become my invitation. The call, for me, is to continue wandering. My initial distrust of rhyme and meter will turn to affection; changing within me the same way Samuel entrusts his son, Harley, to nature.
“Frost at Midnight” works as an invitation, but also encourages as a benediction.
All seasons shall be sweet to thee
I find it hard not to snatch the phrase away from Harley, and stand in the way to receive the encouragement myself. Needed encouragement to be sure, for sometimes not all seasons—in my case, poetry—are sweet to me. My mind may never be able to comprehend the dense metaphors of Donne or make sense of the changing perspectives of T.S. Eliot. Still, I find company with Coleridge and his preaching of the frost’s ministry, received as a token of consolation.
Vexation and intrigue are potent when they work together. Discomfort, too, can be a strong catalyst, as it was for Coleridge in coming to terms with a new life in the countryside and a new way of writing poetry. Years later, I find myself sharing his invitation to be lulled by the unfamiliar. My reward comes in my growing connection with poetry—my highest literary hurdle. But Coleridge’s verses remind me the unmapped spaces are best for exploring. He calls it the ministry of the frost. I call it studying poetry.
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