The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

234 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

deconstruction of Coleridge’s poem, The echoes of the semirefrain

reverberating at the end of the first four stanzas show that she is inter-

ested in creating her own structure and sense of completion rather

than giving a false impression of fragmentariness and improvisation.

She writes to Coleridge,

With THEE I’ll trace the circling bounds

Of thy NEW PA R A DISE, extended;

And listen to the varying sounds

Of winds, and foamy torrents blended!

Now by the source, which lab’ring heaves

The mystic fountain, bubbling, panting,

While gossamer its net- work weaves,

Adown the blue lawn, slanting!

I’ll mark thy “sunny dome,” and view

Thy “caves of ice,” thy fields of dew! (2: 195–6; 5–14)

Coleridge has opened a “new Paradise” for eager poets such as

Robinson to explore on their own. Coleridge’s most famous dream-

poem, “Kubla Khan,” is anything but homogeneous in its metri-

cal structure, employing a multitude of metrical allusions from folk

meters to the sonnet and defying any single formal matrix. As John

Beer says of the poem, “Kubla Khan is a poem about poetry – in some

respects even a poem about itself” (118). This is true not only because

of its analog of poetic creation, but also because the multitude of

effects Coleridge employs in the poem consistently draw attention to

themselves as metrical pyrotechnics. A metrically astute reader such

as Robinson recognized the stitch- work in the fabric responsible for

its rich texture. In “To the Poet Coleridge,” she matches many of the

metrically acrobatic moves Coleridge makes and adds a few of her

own. In so doing, Robinson proves that she recognizes his innovative

blending of poetic forms and praises him for it. Her ode to Coleridge

is not a dream but a waking offer to share with him the poet’s vision

as his peer. Her meter highlights his and thus gives shape to a form

that seemed previously undef ined, almost as if her poem is the record

of his dream. She shows that she understands the metrical structure

of “Kubla Khan” by mimicking it in her poem, while adding her

own unique f lourishes. But she does not attempt to match move-

for- move the metrical complexity of “Kubla Khan” that gives it the

haze of unconscious spontaneity. Hers is deliberately a waking voice,

and she formalizes his unconscious experience: his so- called fragment

becomes her ode. The dream is disturbed, and the poet wakes in

“extatic measures” but, like him, loses the vision.^11

9780230100251_07_ch05.indd 2349780230100251_07_ch05.indd 234 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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