The Influence of Narcotics on Writers & Poets

[Red Terror]

It is said that the poet Coleridge wrote the strange but beautiful poem "Kubla Khan" under the influence of opium or laudanum. Poe is also rumored to have chased the dragon while writing his stories and poems. Hunter Thompson was said to be under the influence of LSD while writing his Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Norman Mailer said marijuana helped him a good deal in his writings. What do you all think? Should writers invoke the narcotic muse or write from its influence or perspective? For my own part, I think poets and writers should have the freedom to experiment, but should at the same time be wary of the baneful influence of narcotics. It's a tricky situation, to say the least.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H729_DYd_V0

[Red Terror]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKa136bgK9c


Kubla Khan



By Samuel Taylor Coleridge




Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.







In Xanadu did Kubla Khan


A stately pleasure-dome decree:


Where Alph, the sacred river, ran


Through caverns measureless to man


Down to a sunless sea.


So twice five miles of fertile ground


With walls and towers were girdled round;


And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,


Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;


And here were forests ancient as the hills,


Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.





But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted


Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!


A savage place! as holy and enchanted


As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted


By woman wailing for her demon-lover!


And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,


As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,


A mighty fountain momently was forced:


Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst


Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,


Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:


And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever


It flung up momently the sacred river.


Five miles meandering with a mazy motion


Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,


Then reached the caverns measureless to man,


And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;


And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far


Ancestral voices prophesying war!


The shadow of the dome of pleasure


Floated midway on the waves;


Where was heard the mingled measure


From the fountain and the caves.


It was a miracle of rare device,


A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!





A damsel with a dulcimer


In a vision once I saw:


It was an Abyssinian maid


And on her dulcimer she played,


Singing of Mount Abora.


Could I revive within me


Her symphony and song,


To such a deep delight ’twould win me,


That with music loud and long,


I would build that dome in air,


That sunny dome! those caves of ice!


And all who heard should see them there,


And all should cry, Beware! Beware!


His flashing eyes, his floating hair!


Weave a circle round him thrice,


And close your eyes with holy dread


For he on honey-dew hath fed,


And drunk the milk of Paradise.