A brief discussion of an admirable poet and my personal connection with the poem

This blog is much more personal than the preceding ones, so I am going to make to give it more of a personal tone.  When asked what is your ‘light bulb’ moment for poetry I cannot place it specifically as poetry has always been a great love of mine. Referring back to my time at school this was always the lesson that i very much looked forward to, and most recently poetry is the lessons I have most enjoyed teaching. So to pin point the moment would be a real challenge, so instead I am going to offer an insight into my own personal connection with a poem with what has become one of my favourite poems.

Poems carry many connotations dependent upon the person and the content. My personal connective moment with a poem did not occur until my second year in university studying Romantic poetry. I found Romantic poetry fascinating, the idea of the connection with the ‘sublime’ through the aid of drug abuse, more specifically opium, quenched my thirst for unique and distinctive poetry. Samuel Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” was created proceeding an opium induced sleep, he awoke and wrote it down. In particular, the mystical element of the poem attracted to me to it the most. The idea of merging dreams and real life is reoccurring theme throughout the poem. The fact it was written after a drug induced dream reveals how Coleridge stretches the walls of the imagination and reality by creating landscapes that are seen within reality. The speaker within the poem shows a great admiration for nature. Yet what is striking and somewhat different about the portrayal of nature in this particular poem is the depiction of the dangerous and threatening aspects of nature. 

The personal connection to this poem actually is due to a song, as on hearing the song “Xanadu” many times prior to reading this poem, I did not have a true understanding of it. Although, on the first read of “Kuble Khan”, the realisation of that the song was based around “Kubla Khan”, gave me a true understanding of the song, and listen to and understand from a whole new perspective. Over two hundred years later and his work is still very influential, and definitely an admirable poet within my own perspective.