In this article, the author discusses how students create their arts projects by responding to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." In creating their arts projects, students incorporate film, painting, performance, and other arts in their imaginative and innovative responses to Coleridge's classic work. The author discusses how the projects make students stronger readers and writers. The author finds that when students move on to writing a more traditional appreciative and analytical essay on a shorter, contemporary poem, students have gained confidence in their ability to respond to a poem personally, with their senses and imagination, to relate individual moments to the whole, to read closely but accept some ambiguities--in short, to make meaning. Through creating the project and through hearing such a range of responses, each student has found his or her poem in the long, complex ballad that is "Mariner." And in writing about the effect of the projects on their reading of the poem, some find language that will give energy and clarity to their later analytical pieces. (Contains 1 figure.)