After our lesson on Tuesday, I now understand why my brain was so scattered when I was drawing my vision of Kubla Khan. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was high on Opium when he wrote it. His poem wasn't something he was trying to explain, but something created by the figment of his imagination. When I was drawing my vision of what Coleridge was explaining, I kept getting caught up on where different things would be and if it made sense--because it constantly wasn't making sense. I'd start by drawing the trees, the garden, and the clouds...then realize that wasn't the main purpose of the piece. So I ended up starting over. But when I started over I found that I started working on the fountain and the dark rocks and the rest of my drawing wasn't going to make sense. I started focusing on the garden because I viewed it as Alice in Wonderland when she is in the garden at home thinking and reading. But then that section of the poem shifted so fast that I started looking for what else stood out because I realized that wasn't what Coleridge wanted us to focus on. That wasn't the mystical part of his poem. I ended up focusing on something that stood out to me--the ice. Every time I hear or read the poem, the line "A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!" (Coleridge, 36). This part seemed the most beautiful and just picturing the place, that's where I wanted to visit. I wanted to visit a cave made out of ice where I could see the sun beating down and have a fountain near by that I pictured as warm...even though we were surrounded by ice.
With Coleridge's poem I think because it was so creative and so fictitious, it allows its readers to go to a place they can only dream about and have always wanted to go. This was shown with all of us picking different poems to draw. Even in the small class, no ones drawings were the same. We all had a part of the poem stand out to us. I think it was probably the place we most want to visit and would be our place of escape. That is why the words stand out to us--its a place we've either been or where we want to go.
I love your commentary on why it was so hard to draw from Kublah Khan because it was exactly how I felt as well. You really captured a sense of how Coleridge was switching endlessly between different, nearly contradictory phrases and how it was up to the reader to target what they really felt drawn to within the poem, rather than just riding along with it and being led like horses with carrots in front of them. I loved reading this. Well done!
ReplyDeleteEmilee Shimazu
I can totally relate to how you said you were feeling scattered after our drawing activity during class, I felt the same way! I was really perplexed by discovering that it was a figment of his imagination and not something that he was trying to recreate. The process that you went about to draw the scenery being described. That is so interesting that you thought about the scenery as Alice in Wonderland. I did not think about it in that way at all and now I can totally see the relation between the two. I like that you mention that in the end everyone had a different perspective when it came to the poem. I love this characteristic about library studies. Everyone gravitates to different components of pieces of literature and interpret and view the piece in a different way. Great Job! :)
ReplyDeleteThat's always amazing to me, too, Rachel: each person's imagination is so different that no drawings are the same. The Alice in Wonderland connection makes sense.
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