so intense. so small. so drunk.

"drunk enough on earth's liquors to relish the prospect of the knife." Lain Sinclair

Kubla Khan was pretty intense for me. I pictured huge overbearing parts of nature that leave you breathless and feeling small. As a child, I played in the mountains and on the rivers and I have felt these feelings; like I am so minuscule compared to this vast world. For instance Coleridge wrote, "measureless to man," twice and I think there was a reason for that. The rhythm and rhyme automatically make me respond to this poem because it is so lyrical and as humans we have an intrinsic nature to be attracted to that type of sound. When reading aloud to myself I got caught up in the melody of it and the scenes it portrayed placed me back into a memory of my own. I believe you could analyze Coleridge's Kubla Khan to death but the beauty of it lies in it's first read, in your natural response and the vast "Paradise" it places you in. Also, it kind of takes you into the intensity of the world because it is so mesmerizing and wondrous that you could forget about the power it holds and how it can't be controlled. I believe in this poem he's realizing how scary and intimidating it is. We're so small in this world and people want to try and destroy it or bend it to their will but the earth holds it's own weapons; this poem says a lot about that I believe but that's just my take on it. You can't get too drunk on the earth or you'll wish you hadn't.