Ah, Donovan, so maligned by the Bobster in Don't Look Back, as he unleashed It's all over now, zbaby Blue.
When I look out my window
What do you think I see?
And when I look in my window
So many different people to be
It's strange
Sure is strange
You got to pick up every stitch
Ken,
In dreams, things unstitch for me. Responsibilities don't so much begin as unravel and echo. So many different people I might have been but will never be. Demons? But maybe you are right: stitches become available for picking up and reincorporating somehow.
Bill
> On 3 Apr 2014, at 8:24 am, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Schwartz's was a courtship story, his father dating his mother. It's
> something to do with him witnessing it as in a theater and crying out in
> horror not to go through with it because of what's coming. Mine...more like
> losing everything, the Donovan song "Season of the Witch." If you lose it,
> tough, you still have to find it because you own the bits and pieces of your
> life, even if they dropped stitches. So back I went in dreams to an aborted
> teaching career, some of it realized but then ruined. One of the worst
> night's sleep I've had in ages. But--I lived anyway. Tough shit to the
> demons in my head. One day they may claim me, but not for a while yet.
>
> Ken
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Bill Wootton
> Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2014 8:16 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Snap Ken: La Cauchemar
>
> Things lost I get too in dreams, Ken but more often ways lost, being
> diverted so I am late and getting later for some appointment, often a
> teaching appointment but the more I try to get on track, the farther I
> wander. And a dawning acceptance of knowing I won't make it. Papers not
> written or not submitted I get too. Remembered hallways are only
> half-remembered and what's at either end of the hallway changes, even the
> side walls bulge or become intangible. Like the sides of a Murakami well.
>
> Responsibilities. Calling out in the picture theatre is the bit that stayed
> with me in the Schwartz story. And being evicted and so missing some of the
> story of his parents' courtship wasn't it? But being returned too and having
> to pick it up. And the awful inevitabilities.
>
> I like your poem for its chase.
>
> Bill
>
>>> On 2 Apr 2014, at 10:20 pm, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Come to in my office chair
>>
>> 2:40 in the morning
>>
>> After a dream of failed tasks
>>
>> exams not given
>>
>> classes untaught
>>
>> oh that was a baddie.
>>
>>
>>
>> Fall into bed and the dream
>>
>> is not through with me yet.
>>
>> It is proctoring an exam in
>>
>> the cafeteria of my elementary school
>>
>> papers ungraded
>>
>> Mr. Wolman what are we to do?
>>
>>
>>
>> I do not know I remember
>>
>> my own work left undone
>>
>> a dissertation unwritten
>>
>> chapters to be handed in
>>
>> I cannot do this
>>
>> I cannot answer for what I fear
>>
>> or what I am supposed to do
>>
>> for them or for myself.
>>
>>
>>
>> The same dream, things dropped
>>
>> cannot be found
>>
>> cannot be recaptured
>>
>> a dream of things lost
>>
>> things that cannot be found
>>
>> chasing in remembered hallways.
>>
>>
>>
>> Ken
>>
>>
>>
>> Truly awful dream. Delmore Schwartz was right: in dreams begin
>> responsibilities. Horrible. I've not had a "losing dream"-my
>> standard-in years, it came back last night. It took me a few minutes
>> to collect myself and realize my only call is to myself, from myself.
>> Unrevised except to fix Outlook's habit of capitalizing first lines of
> everything.
>
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