between sense and nonsense

It is clear that the poem [Kubla Khan] does not make sense. It would be impossible, for example, to draw a map of the pleasure dome, though many have tried. A ‘chasm’ that slants down a green hill ‘athwart a cedarn cover’ is hard to visualise. On the other hand, the poem does make sense to the extent that it is composed of sentences that work grammatically. It is not a collection of random words assembled by free association, as the work of the French Symbolist poets at times seems to be. Coleridge was a profoundly learned thinker and critic as well as a poet, and in ‘Kubla Khan’ he has discovered the space between sense and nonsense where great poetry lies.

—John Carey, 100 Poets: A Little Anthology (Yale U. Press, 2021)