Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s visionary poem about an extraordinary landscape and the power of imaginative creation. The ordered pleasure grounds of Xanadu stand beside forces that seem to exceed human control, from the chasm to the river’s subterranean course. A later movement turns towards song and the poet’s desire to recreate a vision. Sound patterns and abrupt transitions give the fragment much of its force, holding artistic command in tension with an inspiration that cannot simply be summoned at will.