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While Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem “Kubla Khan” stands as an important work within the literary critical context and aesthetic mythology of Romanticism, remaining relevant through its influences on modern and contemporary poets worldwide, it also occupies a special place within the field of dream studies. Coleridge’s dream poem, along with Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and Delmore Schwartz’ “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” may be considered one of the seminal works of dream literature, a subgenre comprised by works of literary art which have their origins in, or are otherwise stylistically, formally or thematically derived from dreams. This paper explores the ways in which Coleridge’s poem―a work from the early Romantic period―serves as a bridge to modern poetry and a useful pedagogical tool in the contemporary poetry classroom. Arguably the most preeminent dream poem of all time, Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” not only allows students and teachers to enhance their understanding of the literary quality of “dreamlike-ness,” but also provides valuable instruction in the fundamentals of poetic composition, such as rhyme, meter, musicality, imagery and evocative juxtaposition while encouraging students to enjoy and engage through active improvisation and collaboration in the composition of their own original verse.