Kubla Khan

Blog 1

Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1. The poem Kubla Khan was a somewhat easier poem to read compared to some of the others assigned. I thought that the author of the poem, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, used a lot of descriptive language that engaged me as a reader and also brought the poem to life. He used vivid imagery when talking about the river Alph; it allowed me to form a picture in my mind of what the river looked like. The rhyme scheme in the poem made it easier for me to read because one line flowed into the next line. I could not relate to the poem on a personal level; however, I recognized the Mongolian emperor’s name Kubla Khan and the place where he lived, Xanadu. I learned about him in a World History course that I took last spring semester.
2. The author of the poem uses contradictory descriptions throughout the poem regarding the river Alph near where Kubla Khan lives. In the first two stanzas, Coleridge describes the sacred river in a positive way. This long river flows through “gardens bright with sinuous rills” and enfolds “sunny spots of greenery.” In line twelve the author takes a turn and says “But oh!” After this line the author begins to use contradictory statements that go against his positive ones. Be begins to discuss the river and where is leads to in a negative way using lines such as “beneath a waning moon was haunted” and “ceaseless turmoil seething.” He describes a woman screaming and flailing for her demon-lover. Coleridge uses these images of contradiction to force the reader to think about the various settings of the poem; the different places the river leads one to. In the poem it is described both in a positive way and in a more negative way. The river leads to appealing and pretty places where there are gardens and greenery, but it also leads to a “savage place” that is haunted. Towards the end of the poem the river noisily sinks into a dead ocean and causes Kubla Khan to hear ancestral voices. These images used in the poem create a somewhat disturbing atmosphere and are used to arouse emotion within the reader. The contradictory images in the poem relate to the last stanza in that the first line of the last stanza “And close your eyes with holy dread” contains contradictory words; holy and dread. The poem turns to first person and the author describes his vision of Kubla Khan. The two words holy and dread create two different emotions. The word holy pertains to something that is divine and blessed, but the word dread pertains to anxiety and fear. The words holy and dread contradict one another because holy has a positive connotation, and dread has a negative one. Coleridge intends to create this contradictory image of Kubla Khan as he did with the river earlier in the poem.