<\/p>\n
Recently, I had this dream: <\/span>Read a Wallace Stevens poem each and every day.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n I call this sort of dream a \u201ctask\u201d dream. Many of the things I have written had their origin in such task dreams. Since Wallace Stevens is one of my favorite poets, I took up this task with enthusiasm. I decided to read a poem a day from <\/span>The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens <\/span><\/i>(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954). As always, I don\u2019t just read a poem, but I read it aloud. To hear the \u201cvoice\u201d of the poem, one needs to hear it, not just see it. <\/span><\/p>\n A few days into this new \u201cdiscipline,\u201d something began to happen that is now ongoing. To give this some context, those of you who know my book, <\/span>Psyche Speaks<\/span><\/i>, may remember my describing a dream I had the night that I heard Robert Bly read Lorca\u2019s <\/span>Casida of the Rose. <\/span><\/i>In the dream, I was leafing through Jung\u2019s <\/span>Memories, Dreams, Reflections<\/span><\/i> when a piece of paper fell out. On it was written, \u201cThe poem wants a poem\/the dream wants a dream.\u201d This dream began to change not only how I experienced dreams and poems, but also how I related to them.<\/span><\/p>\n That was three and more decades ago. So this sense of <\/span>desire<\/span><\/i> on the part of dreams and poems has been bubbling for a long time. It\u2019s still hard to come to terms with this. But here is what began to happen in present time when I followed the instruction of the dream and began to read a Wallace Stevens poem every day.<\/span><\/p>\n As I was speaking the lines from Stevens’ poem, \u201cInfanta Marina,\u201d a line burst into my experience that was not in the poem. The line was: \u201ccats accepting Christ.\u201d This is not a line I \u201cmade up\u201d in any typical sense. It simply presented itself spontaneously. As far as I could tell, it had no relation whatever to Stevens\u2019 poem. But the experience was so strong, that I had to stop and attend to the line and, as I did so, the line became part of a poem. It was not so much that I went into some composing mode. More exactly, I simply opened myself to a kind of \u201cflow\u201d of lines. It was a brief experience and afterward I gave the little poem a title, \u201cGods and Tuna.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gods and Tuna<\/b><\/p>\n \n A little-known secret:<\/span><\/p>\n Cats accepting Christ<\/span><\/p>\n Buddha and all the others<\/span><\/p>\n Like so many tuna<\/span><\/p>\n Humans could learn<\/span><\/p>\n From cats\u2014but don\u2019t<\/span><\/p>\n Wait for that to happen<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n What is most intriguing to me is that this has now become a regular experience. Sometimes it begins as I open the book to read the next day\u2019s poem. Sometimes, it occurs as I\u2019m reading the poem aloud. And sometimes it occurs after the poem. It has the feeling of a channel being opened, a channel from which words stream into my awareness. This is very similar to what my experience is like when I am writing fiction. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n One of my favorite poems by Stevens is his \u201cMountains Covered with Cats.\u201d I have not gotten to that poem in my daily reading yet, but it came to mind when I wanted to begin putting these little poems together. I call them \u201cStrays.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n STRAYS<\/b><\/p>\n \n Like stray cats, <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n these little poems <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n visited upon reading <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n a Wallace Stevens poem<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n every day<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here is another:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Advantage<\/b><\/p>\n \n The cat looks at me<\/span><\/p>\n Not for praise, or love<\/span><\/p>\n Or any such a dog would<\/span><\/p>\n \n The cat looks instead<\/span><\/p>\n To brew some advantage<\/span><\/p>\n Calculating all the while<\/span><\/p>\n \n The cat looks satisfied<\/span><\/p>\n Advantage weighed <\/span><\/p>\n Curls up to sleep on it<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n For now, I just want to report that this is happening and that I experience it as a gift. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently, I had this dream: Read a Wallace Stevens poem each and every day. I call this sort of dream a \u201ctask\u201d dream. Many of the things I have written had their origin in such task dreams. Since Wallace Stevens is one of my favorite poets, I took up this task with enthusiasm. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-soon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}