Prompt #196 – Perchance to Dream

Asleep or awake, I suspect that most poets are dreamers, and our dreams are a rich source of inspiration and creativity.

Much has been written about dreams and their interpretation, and dreams have offered an infinite wellspring of ideas for writers of every stripe throughout written history. This week, let’s write  a poem inspired by an actual dream (happy dream, emphatic dream, nightmare, surreal dream, waking dream, precognitive dream)—any dream that you’ve had.

Guidelines:

1. Dig deeply into your dream recall (your ability to remember dreams) and write down as much of a particular dream as you can remember (perhaps even a recurrent one).

2. Reflect upon the imagery and symbolism of the dream you’ve chosen. Think about the details. To explore some dream symbols, click here.

3. What did the dream mean or suggest to you?

4. Then re-dream your dream in a poem.

5. Alternatively, recall times when you’ve watched a beloved pet sleep, and imagine what that pet’s dreams might have been. Write a poem about a pet’s dream.

Tips:

1. Focus on imagery and on creating a sense of your dream’s mood. Mood and tone will be important in this poem.

2. If the dream didn’t make sense to you, don’t attempt to force it to make sense in your poem.

3. If the imagery of the dream was surreal, then use surreal imagery in your poem.

4. You may want to write in the past tense, but think about switching to the present tense to create a sense of immediacy, as if the dream is happening now.

5. Be aware of “ing” endings and overuse of prepositional phrases.

6. If you write about a recurrent dream, be sure to include some elements of repetition, including anaphora (the deliberate repetition of the first part of a sentence). Repetition can be used for emphasis, as well as to create tension, and to enhance the sound quality in a poem.

7. Let your poem use space on the page in the same way that it uses space in your mind. If the dream components are scattered, scatter their word counterparts across the page with interesting line breaks, indents, and stanzaic arrangements.

Examples:

"Birds Appearing in a Dream" by Michael Collier

"In Dreams" by Kim Addonizio

"Dreams" by Arthur Symons

"Inheriting My Grandmother's Nightmare" by Anne Stevenson

For more examples, visit: www.poets.org/text/poems-about-dreams-sleep.

By way of sharing, here's a dream poem based on a neighbor's suicide

(from my forthcoming book, A Lightness, A Thirst, or Nothing At All).

So Much Life 

The girl who killed herself, her dog, and son speaks to me. She tells me that this death is only sleep. I’m not sure what she means by this—what other death? I stand above her grave, not knowing if there even is a grave (a place to put her—perhaps just ash, the newspapers didn’t say); but, no, I see her face. Her lips move before the words: So much life, she says, is dead before the body follows. She looks at me through stippled eyes and, reaching up, she trims the moon with pinking shears. Light, unraveled, falls (a perfect circle) around the dog beside her—the dog’s spirit scratches its jaw. I don’t know how she came to be inside my dream or why she haunts me—I barely knew her. From my front porch, I see the house in which she lived—the storm door open. Snow that is ice, that is glass, covers the lawn; the lawn splinters and cracks.

(Acknowledgment: Exit 13 Magazine, Vol. #20, 2014)

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Photo: Grateful acknowledgment to Renée Ashley for permission to use 

"Steve and Mona."

www.reneeashley.com