# Re: The Man from Porlock--was Samuel Taylor Coleridge full of shit? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 1, 2014, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450 "2014-05-01T17:38:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/1 "2014-05-01T17:38:08Z")
I’d explain what I mean, but the only people with opinions worth hearing already know. Also, I’m a jerk. “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree.” Poll in a moment. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/2 "2014-05-01T17:54:59Z")
Well, I voted truth int he tale. But a real artist and craftsman can find that mojo again if it’s important enough to them. So he was a bit of a punk about it. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/3 "2014-05-01T19:38:55Z")
A miracle of rare device… Pave Porlock! ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/4 "2014-05-01T19:42:15Z")
Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Also, he’s on the nod. Lies like a rug, too. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/5 "2014-05-01T21:07:10Z")
I believe it. I’ve had similar experiences (minus the drugs). Sometimes when you lose that train of thought, you don’t get it back again. Besides, if he hadn’t made that comment, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have had to come up with some other name in the opening chapters of **The Valley of Fear**. ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/6 "2014-05-01T22:35:39Z")
I’m going by the version in \* Dirk Gentlys Holistic Detective Agency \* which explains the whole thing and brings \* The Rime of the Ancient Mariner \* to boot . ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/7 "2014-05-01T22:55:58Z")
Doesn’t he actually say " person from Porlock"? So it could have been a woman. Anyway, Sammy was a notoriously poor finisher. Kubla Kahn is far from the only thing of his that starts brilliantly but never got finished. Almost nothing he did got properly finished. The person was probably real, but is being used as an excuse. ---
**Author:** ![phouka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c5a1d2/32.png) [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2014, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/8 "2014-05-02T13:51:22Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Well, I voted truth int he tale. > > But a real artist and craftsman can find that mojo again if it’s important enough to them. So he was a bit of a punk about it. Well, sure, you can find the mojo again, but it’s going to be a different color. Or shape. Or it’ll vibrate instead of pulse. Or it sits on your keyboard and doesn’t let you finish. It’s just never the same as when you lost it. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2014, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/9 "2014-05-03T01:05:17Z")
_Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato._ I haven’t voted in the poll because I can’t find an option I quite agree with (though the pie does look tasty). The way I see it is that the preface is as much a part of Coleridge’s art as the poem itself: it informs it and frames it. It may all have happened just as he says – because these petty embuggerances happen all the time – but if it did, it’s the exactly sort of thing he would have made up. I neither know nor care whether the pestiferous Porlockian ever actually had a physical existence, and it doesn’t matter – just as it’s unimportant whether the poem accurately reflects the dimensions and layout of the historical Xanadu. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2014, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/10 "2014-05-03T02:37:51Z")
after I reach the sunless sea (line five) my eyes glaze over. This has happened many times. So I don’t feel the interuption caused any great loss, but I’m willing to accept that there was an interruption. ---
**Author:** ![Flywheel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2014, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/11 "2014-05-03T02:45:24Z")
Here’s what a [finished version](http://books.google.com/books?id=8vVK7b2hRDUC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22pitiless%20parodies%22&pg=PA2#v=onepage&q&f=false) might have looked like. Rather clever of Jacobs to turn a famously unfinished poem into a finished poem about an unfinished building… ---
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2014, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/12 "2014-05-03T03:56:37Z")
Before the dessert course: If you like to eat potato chips and chew pork chops on clipper ships I suggest that you chew A few chips and a chop At Skipper Zipp’s Clipper Ship Chip Chop Shop. [sub]Cause it’s all about the shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and shit.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/13 "2014-05-05T00:34:10Z")
Voted for “junkie” but agree he often got pulled by the seventh inning. Maybe it started to rain, his team was ahead, and the ump called the game complete… ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/14 "2014-05-06T01:36:12Z")
I vote real, oh, too real. This is just the kind of thing that ruins greatness. I have heard that the Porlockian was a bill collector (tho I doubt it), which could throw all kinds of thing out of whack. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/15 "2014-05-06T01:37:31Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Pave Porlock! Yes; and weave a circle round it thrice, and give all Porlockians honeydew enemas! ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-the-man-from-porlock-was-samuel-taylor-coleridge-full-of-shit/687450/16 "2014-05-06T15:28:24Z")
STC yawns, blinks, picks ups the papers and reads them. “That’s pretty good. How will I finish it?” Yawns, blinks, sits for a bit staring into space. “I got nothin’. Cue the person from Porlock.” (Laughs.)