Description
Use the uploaded files to answer the two questions below. The answer for the Dream Journal file must be 1 and a half page. 1. Kunitz distinguishes between the “wild permissiveness of the inner life” and the social order of the waking state. To what extent do you agree with this distinction? Relate Kunitz’s idea to a poem from our packet that you have not yet commented on. 2. What do you think about Breton’s idea that dreams may be as important as waking events? Fill out the dream journal handout and share what you learn about yourself and your life through the dream!
Dream Journal Instructions
Adapted from Stase Michaels
Dreams can help us to solve problems, heal ourselves, and find clarity. You are the best interpreter of your dreams, so let’s get started! Follow these simple steps to discover the deeper messages of your dream-life…Your response should be 1 ½ – 2 pages long.
- Date
- Title
- The Dream/Plot (Write in the present tense, as if the dream were happening now.)
- Summary (a brief synopsis—archetypal overview—1-2 sentences)
- Emotions (What did you feel during the dream?)
- Life to Your Life (What’s happening in your life that might relate to the dream events?)
- Upon Waking (Did you have thoughts/feelings/realizations?)
- Symbols (Was there a stand-out image in your dream that might stand in for something besides itself?)
- What’s the message?
To empower yourself, you can re-enact dreams in waking life. You can even re-enact your dream with a different ending to shift the energy and momentum of the dream.
The Surrealist Manifesto was written by Andre Breton and published as a pamphlet in 1924. Breton defines surrealism as “…psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express—verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner—the actual functioning of thought. [The writing is] dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”
Surrealist poetry uses images that are freely associated. A surrealist poem may not make logical sense, because it juxtaposes strange things that we wouldn’t normally associate via the rational mind. The lyricism of dream images and the subconscious mind are the driving force.
How does a surrealist poem hang together? Note the use of anaphora (repetition of words/phrases) and sound play (alliteration, consonance, assonance, sibilance) as unifying elements. Also note the importance of metaphor and personification as modes of imagery.
Overall, surrealist poetry evokes mood rather than meaning.
Andre Breton (1896-1966)
Postman Cheval
We are the birds always charmed by you from the top of these belvederes, birds that each night form a blossoming branch between your shoulders
and the arms of your well-beloved wheelbarrow which we tear out swifter than sparks at your wrist. We are the sighs of the glass statue that raises itself on its elbow when man sleeps and shining holes appear in his bed, holes through which stags with coral antlers can be seen in a glade and naked women at the bottom of a mine. You remembered. Then you got up, you got out of the train without glancing at the locomotive attacked by immense barometric roots complaining about its murdered boilers in the virgin forest its funnels smoking jacinths1 and molting blue snakes. Then we went on, plants subject to metamorphosis each night making signs that man may understand while his house collapses and he stands amazed before the singular packing-cases sought after by his bed with the corridor and the staircase. The staircase goes on without end. It leads to a millstone door it enlarges suddenly in a public square. It is made of the backs of swans with a spreading wing for banisters. It turns inside out as though it were going to bite itself but no; it is content at the sound of our feet to open all its steps like drawers, drawers of bread drawers of wine drawers of soap drawers of ice drawers of stairs, drawers of flesh with handfuls of hair. Without turning ‘round you seized the trowel with which breasts are made. We smiled at you. You held us round the waist and we took the positions of your pleasure motionless under our lids forever as woman delights to see man after having made love.
1A jacinth is a red-orange gem.
Surrealism 2
Paul Eulard (1895-1952)
The World Is Blue as an Orange
The world is blue as an orange
No error, the words do not lie.
They no longer allow you to sing In the tower of kisses agreement The madness the love She her mouth of alliance All the secrets all the smiles Or what dress of indulgence To believe in quite naked. The wasps flourish greenly Dawn goes by round her neck A necklace of windows You are all the solar joys All the sun of this earth On the roads of your beauty.
Surrealism 3
English poet Dylan Thomas was influenced by the Surrealist movement. He wrote in a letter dated 23 March 1938 to his literary critic Henry Treece, “I make one image—though “make” is not the word. I let perhaps an image be made emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual and critical forces I possess—let it breed another, let that image contradict the first, make of the third image bred out of the other two together, a fourth contradictory image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits, conflict. Each image holds within it the seeds of its own destruction, and my dialectical method, as I understand it is a constant building up and breaking down of the images that come out of the central seed.” (Thomas, Dylan. Selected Letters. pp. 190-191) Note that Thomas did deny that his work was a product of pure automism and acknowledge the formal element as well as the laborious revision that went into his poetry. His interest in the dialectic also arises from his interest in Marxism.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
And Death Shall Have No Dominion (1933)
This poem was written in response to a challenge by a friend when Thomas was yet a teenager. It has become one of his best-loved poems.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
Surrealism 4
Dylan Thomas
Fern Hill (1945)
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Surrealism 5
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Dylan Thomas
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night (1953)
This poem, written in response to his father’s death, is a villanelle. A villanelle is a poem of five tercets (three-line verses) and a quatrain (four-line verse), in which first and third lines of the opening tercet alternate as the last lines of the following verses. The villanelle also uses rhyme scheme through the first and third line of each verse.
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Surrealism 6
Following are contemporary poets who make use of surrealist elements in their poems…
Tomas Transtromer (1931-2015)
The Stones
The stones we have thrown I hear
fall, glass-clear through the year. In the valley
confused actions of the moment
fly howling from tree-top
to tree-top, quieting
in air thinner than now’s, gliding
like swallows from mountain-top
to mountain-top till they
reach the furthest plateaus
along the edge of existence. Where
all our deeds fall
glass-clear
to no ending
except ourselves.
Surrealism 7
James Tate (b. 1943)
Rapture
“If you sit here a long time and are real
quiet, you might just get to see one of those
blue antelope,” I said to Cora. “I’d do anything
to see a blue antelope,” she said. “I’d
take off all my clothes and lie completely still
in the grass all day.” “That’s a good idea,”
I said, “taking off the clothes, I mean, it’s
more natural.” I’d met Cora in the library the
night before and had told her about the blue
antelope, so we’d made a date to try and see
them. We lay naked next to one another for hours.
It was a beautiful, sunny day with a breeze that
tickled. Finally, Cora whispered into my ear,
“My God, I see them. They’re so delicate, so
graceful. They’re like angels, cornflower
angels.” I looked at Cora. She was disappearing.
She was becoming one of them.
James Tate (b. 1943)
Goodtime Jesus
Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dream- ing so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beau- tiful day. How ’bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.
James Tate (b. 1943)
Happy as the Day Is Long
I take the long walk up the staircase to my secret room. Today’s big news: they found Amelia Earhart’s shoe, size 9. 1992: Charlie Christian is bebopping at Minton’s in 1941. Today, the Presidential primaries have failed us once again. We’ll look for our excitement elsewhere, in the last snow that is falling, in tomorrow’s Gospel Concert in Springfield. It’s a good day to be a cat and just sleep. Or to read the Confessions of Saint Augustine. Jesus called the sons of Zebedee the Sons of Thunder. In my secret room, plans are hatched: we’ll explore the Smoky Mountains.
Surrealism 8
Then we’ll walk along a beach: Hallelujah! (A letter was just delivered by Overnight Express– it contained nothing of importance, I slept through it.) (I guess I’m trying to be “above the fray.”) The Russians, I know, have developed a language called “Lincos” designed for communicating with the inhabitants of other worlds. That’s been a waste of time, not even a postcard. But then again, there are tree-climbing fish, called anabases. They climb the trees out of stupidity, or so it is said. Who am I to judge? I want to break out of here. A bee is not strong in geometry: it cannot tell a square from a triangle or a circle. The locker room of my skull is full of panting egrets. I’m saying that strictly for effect. In time I will heal, I know this, or I believe this. The contents and furnishings of my secret room will be labeled and organized so thoroughly it will be a little frightening. What I thought was infinite will turn out to be just a couple of odds and ends, a tiny miscellany, miniature stuff, fragments of novelties, of no great moment. But it will also be enough, maybe even more than enough, to suggest an immense ritual and tradition. And this makes me very happy.
Surrealism 9
W. S. Merwin (b. 1927)
For the Anniversary of My Death
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me And the silence will set out Tireless traveller Like the beam of a lightless star Then I will no longer Find myself in life as in a strange garment Surprised at the earth And the love of one woman And the shamelessness of men As today writing after three days of rain Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease And bowing not knowing to what
W.S. Merwin (b. 1927)
Green Fields
By this part of the century few are left who believe in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts of them served on plates and the pleas from the slatted trucks are sounds of shadows that possess no future there is still game for the pleasure of killing and there are pets for the children but the lives that followed courses of their own other than ours and older have been migrating before us some are already far on the way and yet Peter with his gaunt cheeks and point of white beard the face of an aged Lawrence Peter who had lived on from another time and country and who had seen so many things set out and vanish still believed in heaven and said he had never once doubted it since his childhood on the farm in the days of the horses he had not doubted it in the worst times of the Great War and afterward and he had come to what he took to be a kind of earthly model of it as he wandered south in his sixties by that time speaking the language well enough for them to make him out he took the smallest roads into a world he thought was a thing of the past with wildflowers he scarcely remembered and neighbors working together scything the morning meadows turning the hay before the noon meal bringing it in
Surrealism 10
by milking time husbandry and abundance all the virtues he admired and their reward bounteous in the eyes of a foreigner and there he remained for the rest of his days seeing what he wanted to see until the winter when he could no longer fork the earth in his garden and then he gave away his house land everything and committed himself to a home to die in an old chateau where he lingered for some time surrounded by those who had lost the use of body or mind and as he lay there he told me that the wall by his bed opened almost every day and he saw what was really there and it was eternal life as he recognized at once when he saw the gardens he had made and the green fields where he had been a child and his mother was standing there then the wall would close and around him again were the last days of the world
Surrealism 11
Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady
Pull My Daisy
This poem was written in the late 1940s according to a variation on a game that the Surrealists would play (Exquisite Corpse), with one person writing the first line, the other writing the second, and so on sequentially with each person only being shown the line before.
Pull my daisy tip my cup all my doors are open Cut my thoughts for coconuts all my eggs are broken Jack my Arden gate my shades woe my road is spoken Silk my garden rose my days now my prayers awaken
Bone my shadow dove my dream start my halo bleeding Milk my mind & make me cream drink me when you’re ready Hop my heart on harp my height seraphs hold me steady Hip my angel hype my light lay it on the needy
Heal the raindrop sow the eye bust my dust again Woe the worm work the wise dig my spade the same Stop the hoax what’s the hex where’s the wake how’s the hicks take my golden beam
Surrealism 12
Rob my locker lick my rocks leap my cock in school Rack my lacks lark my looks jump right up my hole Whore my door beat my boor eat my snake of fool Craze my hair bare my poor asshole shorn of wool
Say my oops ope my shell bite my naked nut Roll my bones ring my bell call my worm to sup Pope my parts pop my pot raise my daisy up Poke my papa pit my plum let my gap be shut