I decided to write about Kubla Khan because I found it to be so fascinatingly confusing– I stared at it for a while, but I really didn’t know what to make of it, and I’m interested to hear other peoples’ input. The poem opens by describing a beautiful and complex scene of Kubla Khan’s palace; its walls, towers, and gardens. I found the form of the poem to be just as complicated as the scene of the palace. After reading the very consistent, metrical writing in Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib,” the rhyme scheme and meter in this poem stuck out to me. There are a lot of caesura mixed in with enjambments throughout the lines that effectively break up the rhythm of the meter. Additionally, there isn’t really a consistent rhyme scheme– it changes with every stanza. This made the poem very confusing to read because it felt as if it had no flow. With this complex form in mind, the image that stuck out to me the most throughout the poem was the “sacred river” surrounding the palace (3), which is referenced throughout the poem. The confusing form and ideas involved in the poem made me feel as if my mind was the river, twisting and turning to avoid obstacles and find clarity, as the speaker describes in the line “through the wood and the dale the sacred river ran” (26). Ultimately, this image of the river ends when the speaker explains that it “sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean” (28). Following the metaphor of the river representing the reader’s mind, this idea that all rivers lead to the same fate of the “lifeless ocean” seemed to me a pretty bleak outlook, implying that complex and beautiful thinking often leads to the same conclusion. However, at the end of the poem, the speaker seems to want to recreate the complexity of the palace and its surroundings within himself, saying “could I revive within me her symphony and song” and “I would build that dome in air” (42, 46). Not really sure what to make of this! My main theory is that the speaker is writing this poem to show respect towards the beauty of complexity while (maybe) also mourning the loss of complex thought to the general consensus/norms.