DREAM
It seems like everything I've been reading (and enjoyed) lately has to do with some sort of magic. I was reading sections from THE VINTAGE BOOK OF AMERICAN POETRY and Charles Simic blew my mind. I remember checking out a book of him at the beginning of last summer and being afraid I wasn't ready to read him. The tiny forward about Simic mentions that he juxtaposes the fabulous and familiar. This speaks to me because this is how my dream logic works and that is the series of images I trust.
Does anyone keep a dream log? I read this book last semester by Jack Kerouac called BOOK OF DREAMS. According to Kerouac, the entries are the first thoughts he has after waking from dream and grabbing a pencil and his journal. At his best, his dreams show personal weaknesses and Kerouac does little to hide them. This is an effective tool, I find, for the poet. The more we are willing to show of ourselves, the more the reader is likely to invest in us. This may be a sort of warped logic, but it's what makes sense to me. I can't imagine writing like Wallace Stevens--this isn't to say that I don't like him because he's amazing. I just can't imagine banishing yourself from existing in your own imagination. Stevens said, "It must be abstract." I believe this. Such a general statement covers all perimeters of poetry for me. What must be abstract? The writer, the dream, the image, the metaphor, the language--all sown together in experience.
Kerouac, whom you may like or not like, used to dream about receiving literary compliments from his favorite writers while struggling as a writer himself before ON THE ROAD was published in 1957. He logs one dream where he's talking to W.H. Auden. It's sad to me that there are writers who work so hard that they disappear into their imagination. It pleases me that Kerouac was there, present, right in the center of his imaginings.
Using dream logics in a poem is something that takes some sort of skill, but mostly I'd say it's about the poet's ability to trust the images he or she has seen/felt and make them as vivid for the reader. Experience of experience. To filter and not lose something...what a task!
A prompt that has often worked for me:
1. Wake up after a night of three dreams (they have to be ones you're emotionally invested in--your family, friend, lover, foe, phobia, is there)
2. Create a word bank full of phrases and images alike. The order you write these words down does matter. It's like a sketch of a poem. A very crude sketch. Move quickly, but make sure you get all the major images and ideas down.
3. Wash dishes.
4. Go back to your word bank, work back slowly into emotional place of dream.
5. Look for a way to combine dreams thematically. This usually illicits an idea unconnected to either dream, which provides a structural basis to format the dream parts within.
Good luck
posted by Jae Newman @ 6:25 AM
4 Comments:
First, thanks for the prompt, I think it's a great idea. Second, I absolutely love Jack Kerouac. I have Book of Dreams, a completely original and fascinating book, as well as much of his prose. I even have a CD of his Blues and Haikus, which if you don't have, let me know so I can burn a copy to send to you. You can't go wrong with improv haiku shouted over improv jazz--except that he often does. Many of the haikus fall flat, but when he has a good one, it's exhilarating and might very well wholly exemplify the magic of the spontaneous method that Kerouac tried so hard to relay: when you're in the zone and it's right and you're being true to the moment, the writing will be monumental in quality and importance. Of course, you have to know how to write, too ;)
By writing down dreams, or like JK, the first thoughts we have after our dreams, we are attempting to capture the spontaneous. It will be hit or miss, but something good will come from that purity of mind which exists before, as Shakespeare said, we "murder to dissect," before we overthink a promising image to death.
PS--Simic is awesome.
that might work for me except i rarely have three dreams in one night that i remember when i wake up.
Jae,
I once studied with professional adult storytellers who relied on a similar technique -- build a story by trusting the images (or dreams), as they come. But here's something they did which you could try too -- talk the images out loud (not just write on paper). You could record them on a tape, or talk them out loud to a "poetry buddy" willing to be a patient listener. There's something about this "talking out loud" which has creative value.
I don't keep a dream journal because I have too many other journals--
1) poem title possibilities
2) daily close observations of things
3) phrases overheard or read
4) log of my life at home (I have 17 years worth)
When I travel, I write quick couplets of what's going on (similar to your sketches) -- the orange in the bus in Seville, for ex., which eventually became one of my "postcard poems" of Spain.
Your list of readings includes only men. Have you read any women that you admire? Lots of women keep dream journals.
Keep up the great work!
Gwen
Just for the record, Jae, I used to frequently write poems that attempted to reconstruct dream logic, and I tended to especially love these poems, because they went places my conscious mind wouldn't have thought of going. But I think this art form is very challenging, because as in the adage "there's nothing more boring than listening to someone else's dream," sometimes the reader feels excluded from a dream poem. For example a couple of my poems I was SO in love with seemed to baffle and annoy people I showed them to.
I haven't remembered enough of a dream to write about in a long time. Perhaps I don't "lie around in bed" long enough in the morning;
I've heard this called "simmering," a way to collect the pieces of the dream.
I did write one long dream poem that was accepted for publication. But I wonder, why not embellish, if you don't remember enough of the dream itself? Why not take a few dream images and bind them together with fictional details?
After all, who's gonna know? Or, take one dream image and give it an intellectual, or philosophical,
or historical context? One image from a dream I had the other night was being in a room talking to someone, and Kathleen (our Kathleen) poked her head in the door and shouted: "Go to the fourth floor!!!" Perhaps I will write a poem entitled "Go to the fourth floor." But I will have to make it up.
Another interesting post, Jae. Keep it up!!!
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