Kubla Khan

For something different this week, I've decided to sort of live blog my reaction to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." I've already listened to the poem once, but as I listen to it a second time, I'm going to pause and record my immediate feelings/reactions. Here goes nothing...

End of 1st complete verse: I would love to go to this pleasure dome place that Coleridge is describing. My initial thought is back to the commune on the Susquehanna, but not quite so westernized. Wherever he is describing is very much surrounded by nature, with the ground, gardens, trees and flowers.

Five lines into second verse: Here we go with the moon again. The "romantic chasm" I originally thought of as a scenery piece, which is may still be, but after reading "woman wailing for her demon-lover," maybe the chasm also alludes to a divide between the lady and her lover? Maybe that's too far reaching...

Four lines into third verse: This "shadow" floating on the waves gives me the idea of a daydream. Regardless of what else I've read so far, these few lines make me picture someone standing and watching a river or an ocean while daydreaming. They daydream about this pleasure dome, but now the daydream is floating away on the waves while reality comes back to the person.

End of poem: I think the "he" at the end is Kubla/speaker? It could just be an evil entity I suppose.

Final thoughts: Maybe I'm reading this poem wrong, but it doesn't seem to make sense to me. It sounds like one giant drug trip, which is possible with the kinds of drugs that Coleridge allegedly used. Ultimately, I think it's a story/dream or even multiple dreams that have all been connected and written about, and all revolve around the same topics. I think it may be an expansion on the commune idea, like he is internalizing his thoughts and this is what comes out in his dream state? Or maybe it's just the drugs.

Frosty Scenes

In class, we had briefly discussed the idea of "secret ministry" that I, without having read the poem, began to gather my own thoughts about. After reading only the first line, "The Frost performs its secret ministry,/ Unhelp'd by any wind," I had concluded, for myself and at the time at least, that ministry was an action, such as teaching or advising (ll 1-2). Ministers advise patrons, in religious, governmental and authoritative contexts. I didn't completely agree with that definition however, so I kept thinking. I liked ministry as an action, but more as a mediator, which is similar to what the class came up with. So now, I had the frost mediating between weather, Mother Nature if you will, and something in the scene of the poem, which is presumably a window. I decided I liked that explanation the best, the frost was quietly and unsuspectingly mediating between the cold and the window, which held the heat from inside the house.

Later in the poem, "secret ministry" is used again. "Or whether the secret ministry of cold/ Shall hang them up in silent icicles," is the second usage of this phrase (ll. 77-78). Ministry in this use, I think, still refers to mediating, only this time it is the cold mediating between the weather and the eaves that have dropped, and this mediation may lead to icicles. Again, the formation happens quietly, and it's not a process that can be watched or followed, it occurs in secret.

I like Coleridge's fusion of the elements of nature and the physical world within the poem. I think his use of "secret ministry" is a great way to demonstrate the interaction that happens between the ethereal nature and the present environment.

Love in a Yew Tree

"Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree" is not the first poem we've read where nature and people are opposed. In "Expostulation and Reply" as well as in "The Tables Turned" Wordsworth argued that nature could teach a person more than books and science and art can. The difference is that this poem combines the two ideas, rather than directly argue that one is better than the other.

The man in "Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree" expects the world to be a great place but he cannot handle the hatred, anger, insults and jealousy of the people (ll. 16-17). He leaves. He goes to live in nature at the yew-tree but finds that he has no purpose and is "unfruitful" (ll. 29). This man seems sad in two ways. First, that he experiences and appreciates the beauty of nature that so many others don't. He can stare at the scene around him and continually admire the beauty, but the people he left do not understand it. The second way is that others "felt/ What he must never feel" (ll. 39-40). Though this statement is said to be in conjunction with "mournful joy," I think it's more sorrowful that he did not have the connect with other people (ll. 39). He could experience nature but not friendship and camaraderie.

The speaker of the poem goes on to instruct the readers that those with pride are thoughtless and little (ll 46-51). Wordsworth writes, "The man, whose eyes/ Is ever on himself, doth look on one, /The least of nature's works," where I think he is trying to say if you seclude yourself from the world and only think of your own person, you'll be missing so much of what "nature" really intended you to see (ll 51-53). There must be a balance between a person's interest in self and nature, and in others. Knowledge cannot be found in only one place, and you will be lonely if you isolate yourself from society. The man in this poem died alone, without any connections to anyone, and though he may have lived in a beautiful area, he missed out of all other forms of beauty in the world.