[Max Goodman]

Thank you, Hilary.

Originally Posted by Hilary Biehl

I don't remember any glosses, so either they weren't there or they didn't stick in my memory.

Any idea how you might have reacted--if you hadn't been told about the glosses--on seeing glosses in a pastiche/parody?

(I should maybe have found a way of introducing this thread without explaining about the glosses. Obviously, I've made it harder for readers to imagine they don't know about them.)

[Hilary Biehl]

Max, I guess it would depend on how it's done. If I knew it was a parody/pastiche based on a particular poem, I would try to read or re-read the original poem. I actually did re-read "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" recently, but I read it on the Poetry Foundation website, which does not include the glosses. I had to specifically look up glosses to find an online version that has them.

A note of some sort might be helpful, but I suppose it depends on how important it is for people to know the source material in order to "get" the parody.

If I encountered a poem with glosses and didn't know the background, it would make me think of Nabokov's Pale Fire, but somehow I doubt that would be a common reaction.

Anyway the project sounds like great fun and I hope you'll share it if/when it's finished.

[Clive Watkins]

Reinvent the poem from the glosses?

Clive

[Brian Allgar]

Max, I've read 'The Ancient Mariner' many times, at school, at university, and for the purpose of writing competition entries, and I've never seen a version with the 'glosses' you describe. I think I would be confused by a parody that included them.

[Max Goodman]

Thanks for the further thoughts, Hilary.

That's a fun idea, Clive.

Brian, that's exactly the answer I've worried about. Thanks for sharing it.

This thread has been helpful. I've been tinkering with the pastiche. I'll see what I can do with it.

[Maryann Corbett]

Just one more bit of data: This boomer first read the poem in high school, and it had the notes, and I experienced them as part of the author's intention and would expect them to be there.

[Max Goodman]

Thanks, Maryann!

Entirely apart from my little pastiche, I've grown curious about how common each set of conflicting gloss-expectations are, so if others feel like chiming in, I'll read with interest. Thanks in advance.

[Ned Balbo]

Late to the party, as usual ~ !

Clive, your list of Coleridge's best mirrors my own. Those poems are inexhaustible, and for different reasons, which speaks to their range.

I had to do an oral report on Coleridge's versions of "Dejection: an Ode" in grad school. It was fascinating to comb through the various cuts and changes that moved it from a highly personal effusion to its final (much shorter) version.

Clive's list:

This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison (1797)
Christabel (1797 – 1800)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798)
Frost at Midnight (1798)
Kubla Khan (1798)
Dejection: an Ode (1802)