In his introduction Gilbert Shelton, a man who knows, notes that Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem on which this book is based is lacking in humour, yet raises our spirits by explaining how Hunt Emerson more than makes up for it. Emerson takes the text and then extemporises wildly around it in the manner of a master jazz musician, sticking to the text, yet adding tone and colour. It's perhaps going too far to suggest he brings out the hilarity that's always lain within, but he certainly exacts just revenge on behalf of anyone who's had to spend a term studying Coleridge's opium-induced horrors...
The classic poem by Samuel Taylor Coldridge, humorously and quirkily illustrated by the magnificent Hunt Emerson.
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