Stevie Smith and Coleridge's "Person from Porlock"

Stevie Smith [left] has a wonderful poem about the "person from Porlock" who came knocking on the door to sell Coleridge an insurance policy or something, and though he was in the middle of writing "Kubla Khan" STC decided to let the fellow have his attention for an hour or so, and then he was surprised that he didn't remember the rest of the poem, which he had written in his mind in a kind of trance-like vision that doesn't come around all that often, even if you're the great Coleridge, most naturally talented of all the English romantic poets. Anyway that's the story Coleridge palmed off to explain why "Kubla Khan" was, in in his mind, a fragment and probably a failure. Why would he make that story up -- if he did? See Tom Clark's blog for portraits of the players, Smith's poem,and an eagle eye map of Porlock. And re-read "Kubla Khan." -- DL