New Year's Poem: "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

So I suppose you're saying, "What does this have to do with New Year's? This poem's about sex and creativity--the mighty fountain and all that. And everything's fertile and sensuous--he can't write about this from Michigan in winter. And he better not sing about it with that damned banjo."

Well, dudes and dudettes, Xanadu is also a place as paradoxical as it is sensuous, sexual, dynamic, creative, and fertile: "It was a miracle of rare device, / A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice." Kubla Khan made it, and like him, I have a few Abyssinian maids up my sleeve. Dulcimer and banjo, dulcimer and banjo. When it works, it works.

And here in the midst of my creations, have I not heard you singing about my works and me:

. . . Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.


Or was it George Clooney you were gonna weave a circle 'round?

Happy New Year.

Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.


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