The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

By Kristin Prevallet

A video gloss on a famous poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge : :

Buffalo, 1995

I, erratic but with great conviction, took upon
this close reading of Coleridge as a means
of negotiating modern and classical notions
of whose poetry? what canon? etc. And in
the process made a diorama of my friends in
Buffalo, 1995.

Fare well, Mac Hammond. Ancient
in spirit and hence pomposity
—a passionate man—
and a great teacher. One of the first of his
generation to bring poetry and video together.
He was the Ancient Mariner
to all who knew him and really
did spin stories for hours. . . .

And so the story is told from the old man’s
vantage of hindsight—reflecting on his young
self and his self-fearlessness. Taylor Brady,
rooted but regal, the young mariner. And
Nick Lawrence, who served ox tail soup and
other remarkable dishes at his parties, the
wedding guest.

Finding a wedding couple among
heterosexuals was all but impossible—they
took the mock wedding too seriously.

I hardly knew the wedding couple when I
asked them to play the part and I wonder
where are they now? Ever-amouritus: Danny
and Scott.

Lake Erie has the aura of the sea—huge
sturgeon and weird seaweed and a shore that
extends for miles.

And the shipmates, cursed and tossed
to and fro by someone else’s fate:
namely mine as I drove them to
a very dangerous toxic island right
in the middle of a spewing factory and
then into the belly of a collapsing grain
elevator. . . .

And what can be said of death, now my x-
husband? Alas those were the days. . . .

And of the hermit and of the rower
—Julia and Lauren—who brought
witchy power to this story of men. . . .

The music all locally composed; the poets and
artists all immersed in their studies of
image and language.

The story here is told literally—as literally as
was possible, that is, without a ship. I don’t
remember why I didn’t abstract Coleridge’s
story into its essence of sound and drugged
association.

But so it is. . . .