SOURCE: Beer, John. “The Languages of ‘Kubla Khan.’” In Coleridge's Imagination: Essays in Memory of Peter Laver, edited by Richard Gravil, Lucy Newlyn, and Nicholas Roe, pp. 220-62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

In the following excerpt, Beer offers perspectives on “Kubla Khan” as a work about poetic genius.

A close reading of “Kubla Khan” makes one aware of an irresolution in the imagery which stands in marked contrast to the homogeneity of the verse. Throughout the poem there runs a strong incantatory strain, within which we become aware of an ingenious poetic language. The feminine rhymes in the second, third and fourth stanzas bring in a lightness and variation which is regularly superseded by a powerful and strong iambic movement. The effect of inevitability becomes stronger each time, until the final lines of the last stanza, which have the quality of a charm.

There is, however, a contrast...