Since starting graduate school, my poetry has really suffered. I have been trained to analyze poetry so much that my analysis infected my own writing. My poems have become stilted, or too academic (read: obscure), or too much like someone else, rather than myself. I never had this problem when I was younger, writing from inspiration rather than influence. I am happy to say, however, that I just had a refreshing breakthrough in my poetic voice.
I never know how much stock to put in dreams, but I have always been a very vivid dreamer. I will spare you great detail about my dreams. Suffice it to say that I've had some really eerie and inexplicable ones before. Last week, just as school was winding down, I dreamed a poem.
I've had dreams of writing poems before -- I'm sure that has to be one of the nerdiest things a girl can admit. But these dreams are euphoric in some ways. I dream that I've been given golden words, and I write them down, and they are breathtaking. But inevitably I wake up and can't remember a single one of them.
Last week I woke up at 3 a.m. with this feeling of fading euphoria, and I quickly remembered a wonderful dream I had about wading through a brook that ran through my childhood neighborhood. I was so exhausted that I couldn't write anything down. I just said to myself, "You have to remember this. You will remember. Say 'Tadpole' over and over." So I fell back asleep repeating "Tadpole," to remind myself of the dream, which I had been writing into a poem.
Of course, the next morning, I didn't remember it at all. But two days later, while I was giving a final exam, "Tadpole" flashed through my mind, and it all came back! While my students labored over their exam, I wrote a poem. And not a stilted, academic poem either. It was the first poem in almost five years that felt like me again. And it was euphoric, just like I dreamed it would be.
It may be anti-climactic to say that I don't plan to post the poem, just yet. It's still too fresh and precious, and I don't think I'm ready for criticism. Perhaps once the glow has faded a bit, I will let go and be able to ask for readers' responses. For now, just know that I feel such relief that my voice, so long buried, has somehow resurfaced after all this time!
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'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan...' I think that's awesome. I wish I could even remember my dreams, much less write sublime poetry through them. Of course, the Romantics were all over the idea that the best poetry was written during sleep--the whole idea of spontaneous overflow and the unconscious imagination. One poet tried consuming raw meat before going to bed to ensure vivid dreaming.
Another poet--and this is not meant to call a comparison to your dream poetry!--was convinced that he wrote his best poetry in his sleep, until his wife recorded some lines that he muttered in the middle of the night:
"By Heaven! I'll wreak my woes
Upon the cowslip and the pale primrose!"
All that to say, I'm happy to see you've made a small return to blogland. I hope your work and teaching is going well.
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