As a poet, Coleridge lives mainly by The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the unfinished Christabel, and the Kubla Khan fragment. These mark out his own unique, magical, territory, and after them the bulk of his "occasional" verse is conventional and even disappointing, a few lyrics and odes excepted. Ted Hughes's foreword and long, ungainly, intermittently fascinating introductory essay take up nearly 100 pages, which is more than two-fifths of the book. They, are full of a poet's insights, though they also generalise quite recklessly and there is so much about the Serpent, the Woman, the Oak, the Christian Self and the Unleavened Self that the reader may at times feel that he/she is back in Robert Graves/White Goddess country. The choice itself includes some unfamiliar poems as well as all the expected favourites.