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Scott Cairns’ “Chemo With Coleridge” · The Daily Poem

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, September 14, 2026.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by Scott Carnes, his new collection, Against Certainty.
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  SPEAKER_00: It released last month from Slant Books.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is called Chemo with Coleridge.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is in many ways,
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  SPEAKER_00: at least on the surface, a poem about the consolations that poetry can provide.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've heard Stories similar to this one in other quarters.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone reciting Yeats to themselves while they sit in an MRI machine.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here we get the words of Coleridge as a kind of spiritual infusion that is parallel
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  SPEAKER_00: to the physical chemical infusion of the chemotherapy.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it's not a naive celebration of poetry,
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  SPEAKER_00: some imagining that reading Coleridge in this place can provide a special sort
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  SPEAKER_00: of secret cure,
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  SPEAKER_00: that it can erase pain,
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  SPEAKER_00: that it can solve the suffering of the people in the chairs next to the speaker.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the works of Coleridge are meaningful here,
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  SPEAKER_00: not because they erase the suffering,
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  SPEAKER_00: but because they redeem the time and they give some meaning to the suffering and
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  SPEAKER_00: the travail against it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that's in part the hope in the final lines.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have the dream,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Xanadu-esque vision of creating something with order and form out of
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  SPEAKER_00: the frozen chaos of the diabolical ice.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here's the poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Chemo with Coleridge The port implanted in my chest will serve to deliver directly
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  SPEAKER_00: to my heart the pharmacon my doctor has alleged might just give my malicious blood
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  SPEAKER_00: a nudge in the general direction of its atonement, my repair.
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  SPEAKER_00: May it be blessed.
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  SPEAKER_00: To keep my mind otherwise engaged,
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  SPEAKER_00: I have brought my long-time correspondent, Mr.
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  SPEAKER_00: Coleridge,
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  SPEAKER_00: his collected works,
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  SPEAKER_00: His collected works are working their charms to the degree that hours pass
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  SPEAKER_00: without my dwelling on the manifestly dire straits of those who sit adjacent,
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  SPEAKER_00: receiving their own special mix of remedial poisons.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, dear Mr. Coleridge.
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  SPEAKER_00: So long as I do not dwell over much on their gaunt and sallow visages,
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  SPEAKER_00: my own languishing is less likely to drag me to grim self-pity,
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  SPEAKER_00: which seems far too near to death.
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  SPEAKER_00: My pouring over these beloved,
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  SPEAKER_00: demanding poems infuses my anxious heart with a balm concocted in concert
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  SPEAKER_00: and correspondence with the terms I hold in hand.
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  SPEAKER_00: As I read, I say the words, each syllable within my mind, my very noose.
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  SPEAKER_00: I say the words there,
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  SPEAKER_00: listening,
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  SPEAKER_00: that I might revive their symphony within me,
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  SPEAKER_00: that from this ice I might yet build a dome.
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  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back tomorrow with a subscriber episode and then here on the main channel on Wednesday.
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  SPEAKER_00: Till then,
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  SPEAKER_00: visit us at dailypoempod.substack.com to listen to past episodes of The Daily Poem,
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  SPEAKER_00: to share your own thoughts about each day's poem,
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  SPEAKER_00: or to subscribe and become a supporter of the show.
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  SPEAKER_00: For all of us at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson wishing you happy reading.