The Kubla Khan

5) Discuss the poem in terms of Coleridge's introduction to it. How is it like a dream? What makes him call it "A Fragment"? NOTE: "a person from Porlock" has since become a saying common to poets and other writers who speak of work that has been interrupted.
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The Kubla Khan came to him in a dream that was likely brought on by the drugs Coleridge had been prescribed. The images still seem to flow well. Personally, from the way he was introduced this piece I don’t feel like it’s a fragment of the dream, I feel like this is not the same beautiful piece he saw in his mind. “As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character…” This is something entirely different, not what had come into his head, but a couple of verses that describe the scene about him. In this, I wonder if the actual piece that had come to him is more narrative, as this to me sounds like a description of a vision as opposed to the vision itself.
The images are interesting and capture your attention with direct use of colors and images. This poem does seem to crave to be read out loud though. The repeating sounds and rhyme scheme catch your ear easily. What makes me feel he was at least under some influence is the fact that he does in fact claim it is based from a dream and the fact that it sounds like one with “incense-burning trees”, a “woman wailing for her demon-lover”, and this “dome of pleasure” are all strange images amongst many strange images.
He calls it “A Fragment” because he feels it isn’t complete. Of course, that gets subjective, when is a work actually complete? When the author/poet/artist/whatnot says so is generally my belief. He originally had much more in his mind, “he could not have composed less than from two or three hundred lines” but that was before the interruption from this “person from Porlock.” He then says he had only retained “some vague and dim recollection of the general puport of the vision” and all that was left to him then was “some eight or ten scattered lines and images”. I think though the poem is unusual and not the result of a perfectly aware and lucid mind exactly, it could easily just be on its own and be acceptable. If the poet says it’s a fragment, I’m inclined to believe him, but that’s just me.

Let me add, this made me recall a page in a certain webcomic I like and thought might be interesting to some folks. http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/the-person-from-porlock/