230 The Poetry of Mary Robinsonpoem is its explicit and deliberate replication of various features of
the meter and structure of “Kubla Khan.” Robinson’s poem mim-
ics some of Coleridge’s metrical devices: like “Kubla Khan,” it seems
to adopt the contorted, unusual ballad form, while masquerading as
an irregular ode. But the metrical construction of Robinson’s poem,
in its overt similarity to “Kubla Khan,” suggests that there is more
method to the formal structure of “Kubla Khan” than most readers
recognize. If Coleridge is correct in his assessment of Robinson’s ear
for meter, surely the interplay of forms in “Kubla Khan” would not
escape her notice. As Coleridge’s “mingled measure” becomes “extatic
measures” in Robinson’s poem, the metrical puzzle of “Kubla Khan”
becomes decipherable. The only difficulty for Coleridge and his theo-
ries of poetry is that, as he delineates the process of poetic creation,
Robinson suggests that style and substance, meter and matter, diverge
into separate issues that do not necessarily reconcile (as Coleridge
insists they should in Biographia Literaria). Because both poets were
keenly aware of the principles of versification, the metrical structure of
Robinson’s poem is similar enough to Coleridge’s to occasion a recon-
sideration of the metrical issues in “Kubla Khan.”
By not only appropriating his images, motifs, and language but also
by fitting them into a more obvious structure in order to mimic and
highlight the structure of “Kubla Khan,” Robinson suggests what critics
of the poem would fail to see for more than a century—that Coleridge’s
poem is not a fragment at all but rather a carefully constructed and com-
plete statement on the poetic imagination. Coleridge’s most significant
clue is the metrical structure of the poem. The act of poetic creation,
coinciding with the creation of “the Dome of Pleasure,” climaxes in
lines 31–36 where “the mingled Measure / From the Fountain and
the Cave” is heard; though the passive construction omits by whom it
is heard, “the mingled Measure” is surely poetic song.^10 The measure
that Coleridge mingles throughout is the standard iambic pentameter
line devised by Chaucer that predominates in lines 8–30 and more
broadly in the accentual folk/ballad/hymnal meters native to England.
Coleridge varies line lengths and disrupts formal rhyme schemes; still,
the meters and forms remain suff iciently intact to be recognized by the
metrically astute Robinson but have very little to do with the poem’s
subdivisions of three sections (1–11, 12–36, 37–54), which is how it
appears in most reprints. Robinson crafted her poem along the lines of
what Coleridge’s text suggests, metrically speaking.
“Kubla Khan” is divided into three stanzas that parody the staples
of English versification; and the metrical form subverts connotative
meaning, rather than being related to it. The poem’s prosody calls9780230100251_07_ch05.indd 2309780230100251_07_ch05.indd 230 12/28/2010 11:09:06 AM12/28/2010 11:09:06 AM
10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel RobinsonCopyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket iTr
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