What might be considered Coleridge's literary "specialty" as demonstrated in his poems?

Coleridge's poems employ the common techniques of poetry,
but what seems most special about his poems is their romantic, often visionary, content
and the richness of his imagery. Reading a Coleridge poem is to take an adventure into a
mysterious setting--exotic, exquisitely beautiful, often strange, and always compelling.
His poetic imagery inspires the imagination and creates unforgettable pictures in the
reader's mind.

Coleridge poems, "Kubla Khan" and "The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner" are excellent examples of his poetic imagination and power of
description. "Kubla Khan" is brief (54 lines); "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," in
contrast, is a quite lengthy dramatic narrative. Both of these works, however, take the
reader to strange, exotic places that are captured in a series of images, rich in tone.
Consider, for instance, the opening lines of "Kubla
Khan":

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.

The exotic, mysterious
setting of Xanadu captures the imagination immediately, and it is then fixed in the
mind's eye through the image of an ancient river running through caves too vast to be
measured, falling finally into a "sunless sea," deep within the earth. Coleridge's
"specialty" as a poet is perfectly demonstrated here in only five lines. The remainder
of the poem creates other vivid, romantic images, as does "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner," a supernatural tale of men at sea who experience sights and sounds not to be
forgotten.