Review of”Dream” by Kwame Dawes from collection Wisteria by: Mahnaz Badihian
This poem has political and racial messages. Although the poem “Dream” is a delicate poem it contains the harsh reality of racial issues that existed and to some degree still exists in America.
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Review of”Dream” by Kwame Dawes from collection Wisteria
Dream
In New York State, the farms spread
With familiar patient grace;
The sky is big, a fabric of colors
Changing in the dazzling light,
The worn wood of ancient barns,
The timeless drag of farm critters.
In the distance, I see the trail
Of a train, crawling south,
Naming the mystery of cities,
Keys to my heart. I long
For the simple smells of swamp earth,
The fingers of the soil holding me.
In this reverie, dreaming my body
Toward the factory where we make bombs
It is easy to forget the dancing lights
Circling the stern street-lamp
There on Moore Street, the flashing
Scared eyes of the Klansman; boys
I know I seen naked, heard bawl,
aflame with something searing,
The sick hate of a boy-child for a mother
Wanting so much to be a man among men,
Willing to slaughter love for the company
Of masculine smells, grunts, laughter.
I turn away from the memory, longing
For the swamp only. The train whistles soft
Through the big space. Time is still. I linger.
The poem has nine triplet stanzas with unequal length. Each stanza begins with the letter “I”. The narrator at the beginning of this poem sharply announces that he is in a farm in New York. The first four stanzas are a beautiful explanation of the farm. The sequence of the words is pleasing to the tongue and ear. Gertrud Stein once said: “Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure”. We can sense this pleasure in the poem “Dream”.
…... the farm spread
With familiar patient grace,
The sky is big, a fabric of colors
The syntax in these three lines takes the reader to the farm and shares the joy with the narrator. The use of the word “spread” is so beautifully used, it reminds you of spreading a table cloth which the poet cleverly encourages with the use of “ fabric of colors” to describe the sky and its many colors. By describing the vastness of sky as a reader I felt I am walking in this big, beautiful farm in the evening hours; a place that is safe and peaceful. One can say if the sequence of words is pleasing to read, then the music in the line is enjoyable too.
If we look at the third stanza we can see the concentration of similar sounding letters that make this poem rhythmic and musical.
In the distance I see the trail
Of a train, crawling south,
Naming the mystery of cities,
All these words have the intension to create music or harmony when pronounced. The same is true when we look at the words in the fourth stanza; we can find rhythm and pleasure in reading these three lines as well:
Keys to my heart, I long
For the simple smells of swamp earth,
The fingers of the soil holding me.
One can say that the poem “Dream” is a well designed free verse poem that does not follow the restrained pattern of given forms.
The narrator is imagining a journey from New York to the south on a train with a goal to smell the simple swamp earth. This serene journey is interrupted with the memory and thoughts of the Klu Klux Klan.
Circling the stern street-lamp
There on Moore Street, the flashing
Scared eyes of the Klansmen; boys
It seems that the narrator has taken this journey once before and recalls specific moments that continue to hurt him upon remembrance. Despite the traumatic memory, the smell and aroma of the swamp stays strong and pleasing, “The fingers of the soil holding me“. Because of the strength of the positive memory of the swamp that holds him, he decides only to think about the smell and aroma of the swamp earth and nothing else and to turn away from a memory that bothers him.
I turn away from the memory, longing
For the swamp only. The train whistles soft
Through the big space. Time is still. I linger.
This poem has political and racial messages. Although the poem “Dream” is a delicate poem it contains the harsh reality of racial issues that existed and to some degree still exists in America.
Despite the hurtful and negative images, this is a positive poem, a good dream not a nightmare. The poem’s strongest point and metaphor is the line”fingers of the soil”. This is a strong, earthy and beautiful line.
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mahnaz badihian