Welcome back, class.

If you recall, the last installment of the Literary Corner featured a comparison between the almighty Ghost Deini and Gerard Manley Hopkins. This time we’ll look at works through the generations that are two sides of the same coin: the works of English Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge along with Atlanta lyricists Big Boi and Andre 3000, collectively known as Outkast.

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Lyrical Ballads — This collection of poems, featuring works by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, originates from the early Romantic period. The book had two very disparate voices based on who was writing each poem. Wordsworth wrote about his loves and the beauty of nature around. Coleridge was the ear to the street. While Wordsworth was bathing in pathos and emotion, Coleridge was keeping it grimy telling stories of mariners and dead sailors.

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Speakerboxxx/The Love Below — It’s hard to imagine two more different albums packaged together. 3 Stacks was lighting Badupuddissy-scented candles in the studio and singing his heart out about tip-toeing to the sun and masturbation. I think we all know what was in the air when Big Boi made his opus. Tales of prostitutes, church and down-home Atlanta living.

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“Knowing” Vs. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner“

Only four poems in Lyrical Ballads were written by Coleridge. He was the least popular of the duo, as Wordsworth was seen as the frontrunner. Sound familiar? Big Boi has always been the lesser appreciated Stankonian in the eyes of the mainstream. But Big Boi and Coleridge have shown brilliance that stands out in comparison to their collaborators.

Coleridge’s masterpiece was an epic poem “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” about a group of sailors that come across and albatross that leads to their deaths. The gruesome part of the story is the decay that each mariner faces. Death approaches the ship with decaying features that mimic the crew’s:

“Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold :
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.”

This sounds very similar to Big Boi’s Wanda:

“Now that’s ass backwards
All you got in the frigerator is bratwurst
And your stomach is balled in a knot
…destroyed by the need to enjoy the finer things in life.”

Coleridge and Big Boi were able to use their work to delve into less-“romantic” topics to deconstruct humanity and the choices we make.

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“Tintern Abbey” Vs. “A Life in the Day of Benjamin Andre”

Though the more harmonic songs on the album fit well with Wordsworth’s poetry, I’m going to highlight Andre 3000’s rapping performance – a five-minute long stream of conscious track at the end of the album – and compare it to Wordsworth’s epic poem at the end of Volume One of Lyrical Ballads.

Literary critic Judith W. Page wrote a book called Wordsworth and the Cultivation of Women in which she chastised the poet for silencing women in his work, only using them as props in his quest to explain his own emotions. She uses “Tintern Abbey” as an example. The poem, in which Wordsworth’s sister is a character, is one where “the beloved sister silently serves as a mirror in which the poet can gaze into his past and hope for his future.”

And so along similar lines, we take “A Day in the Life of Benjamin Andre,” which begins with the line “I met you in a club in Atlanta, Georgia…” The female subject is given grazing details; she had a baby, drove him to the Dungeon, etc. But, she is only there to allow Andre to tell the story of his and Big Boi’s careers. The woman is again silent. Honestly, I don’t know if I buy Page’s argument that this particularly wrongs the women, but it is fascinating and binds the two works. And, Andre’s dopeness on that track is pretty much beyond criticism.

That’s all for today, tune in next time when we compare William Blake to a young Nasir Jones.