Before Dreaming: Poems by Arn Strasser, reviewed by Gigi Cooper

Before Dreaming

EPSON MFP image

by Arn Strasser

 

Budding Branch Books, an imprint of Asher & Merriman Publishers

ISBN# 978-0-9841874-1-6

2015, 89 pp., $19.95

www.buddingbranchbooks.com

 

Before Dreaming almost is correct; Between Dreaming would be accurate. Arn Strasser’s collection investigates the interaction between the dream state and wakefulness. He approaches the enigma of the dream world with both wonder and dread, exploring the boundaries between living and dead, youth and age, adventure and solace. Without magniloquence, he takes the reader on a journey from as close as the dining room and sofa to the markets and shores of Sardinia.

For Strasser, sleep is not a separate condition, but a way to access both memories and the future. Dream and memory inextricably intertwine in the book, most literally in the penultimate set of poems

called “The Wanderers.”

 

  1. Night

… so we may wander

the landscapes

of our dreams … .

 

these constellations of our

desires, a twilight of

remembrances.

 

  1. Awakening

Do you hear

voices

of the dead,

 

who speak in memory … .

 

In this book, memories are more permanent than transitory life, but they are frustratingly unreliable and elusive. Several poems in the collection are lamentations — an effort to conjure and recapture that which is lost, which here is undiminished memories. The strongest poems are these first-person meditations.

I am trying, trying to bring you forward

even to see your eyes

but the song the song, I remember.

(“Your Irish Heart”)

Dreams in fact may substitute for memories. As for sleep, on the one hand, one suffers from an unstated fear of not waking (“A European Sets the Table”) from the dreams [that] are the dark energy of the night (“Silence Room”). On the other hand, the author looks forward to the repose of wandering, even though a dream is a creature of wonderment, longing and fear” (“Before Dreaming”).

Gardens, and fruit in particular, like dreams, serve as a mechanism for looking into the past and connecting to the present. “The Fig Tree” conjures a couple from “long ago”:

she feels the strength of truth

and when he hands her a fig

she bites deeply into the dark skin

Ripening fruit is a persistent theme, with poems featuring ripe plums, cherries, apricots, figs, olives, and apples. Ripeness is that perfect, ephemeral moment before a dream ends, before a memory fades.

While Strasser’s poems focus little on meter – and only one rhymes – he uses anaphora and refrain effectively and extensively, as in do not be afraid in “The Prayer.” The less compelling poems are descriptive landscapes such as “The Beach at Manzanita.” When tackling love, Strasser falters, verging on cloying recitations of emotions.

The “Three Tales” that close the book are a humorous departure. In the first, the writer worries needlessly over a cat. The second is a hilarious take on the contemporary preoccupations and proclivities of the Greek gods. Appropriately, the final poem finds an insomniac hotel guest sarcastically entreating boisterous Rome to keep him awake, ending the collection in a flourish.

Whether reflecting on a lifetime or invoking a generation past, the reader will not find answers here, but will find:

a tenderness, a kindness of

strangers, the milk of gracious

laughing, laughing.

(“Along the Path of Sycamores”)

 

Reviewer Bio:

Gigi Cooper is a transportation and environmental planner and writer in Portland. Her poem “Field” was an honorable mention in the Spring 2013 OPA contest.

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