The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

232 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

and as a poem about the arbitrary nature of poetic form and its inher-

ent pleasures in and of itself. She was confident enough to avoid imi-

tating Coleridge’s metrics and to invent her own, while suggesting

that at least one reader recognizes the surprising formality of “Kubla

Khan.” Robinson’s poetic reading divides Coleridge’s poem into the-

matic or semantic sections. This happens in her poem with the con-

struction of five distinct but highly irregular stanzas, which act more

as paragraphs than strophes and demonstrate her comprehension of

the verbal texture of “Kubla Khan.” Within the stanzas themselves,

Robinson toys with form much in the same way Coleridge does, but

far less obliquely in order to expose the metrical game Coleridge is

playing and thereby to play along with him. As she does while quot-

ing and paraphrasing its language, Robinson also demonstrates her

comprehension of “Kubla Khan” by echoing its prosody, picking up

on the most obvious features of the poem and exaggerating them.

So, when inspiration wakes in her “extatic measures,” she is not only

referring to the rapturous pleasure of reading Coleridge’s “mingled

measure” but also—playing on the older sense of the word “ecstatic,”

as in “being outside the body”—she is extending Coleridge’s metri-

cal clue by pointing out that both his poem and hers defy stanzaic

classification even as they suggest it. Robinson’s “mingled measure,”

therefore, is not only her recognition of Coleridge’s, but also the

amalgamation of her meter and his in her own “extatic measures.”

Like “Kubla Khan,” Robinson’s poem opens in a folk meter, and

thus she makes her first nod to Coleridge’s metrical scheme. Lines

1 through 8 are actually two stanzas of long hymnal measure. The

poem opens with Robinson offering to wander with Coleridge, but

she makes it clear that, while his poem initially meanders to achieve

its metrical effect, she is off to a running start. The words connote a

tribute, but the meter also clearly announces a contest. Her metrical

pyrotechnics continue throughout. The second stanza of the poem

appea r s to con si st most ly of ia mbic tet ra meter couplet s f ra med by long

hymnal measure stanzas; but after reading “Kubla Khan,” Robinson

clearly intends to mingle the measure of her poem to greater effect.

Line 16 draws closer attention to the metrical scheme of the stanza

and to itself, because it is the stanza’s only pentameter line. Because of

its length and its metrical variation, this line indicates that Robinson

is doing something in the stanza: since it conveniently consists of 18

lines without the first long hymnal measure stanza, the end- stopped

fourth line suggests that it also contains a perverted English sonnet,

with the required seven rhymes but in tetrameter. Line 16, there-

fore, must be an ironic comment on the form the sonnet takes. The

9780230100251_07_ch05.indd 2329780230100251_07_ch05.indd 232 12/28/2010 11:09:06 AM12/28/2010 11:09:06 AM

10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel Robinson

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