A Poet Dreaming: An Interview with Lesléa Newman
The connection between dreams and poetry can be illustrated simply by pulling a book of poetry off a shelf, says author Lesléa Newman. ‘Open to the table of contents and you’ll almost always find a poem with the word dream in the title.’
As the leaves change colors, let your thoughts turn to poetry
In preparation for the 30 Poems in November fundraiser, and the start of The Poetic Dream online writing course that begins Nov. 4, today’s edition of All the Snooze That’s Fit to Print features an interview with my fabulous friend,the author, and creative dreamer Lesléa Newman. Lesléa’s extensive and impressive biography can be found here. During her tenure as the Poet Laureate of Northampton, Mass., Lesléa launched the original 30 Poems in November project, which is featured in this post.
Looking inward toward dreams and poetry
An interview with Lesléa Newman by Tzivia Gover
Lesléa Newman is a prolific writer who has published over 70 books including many books of poetry. Although her dreams aren’t as prolific as her literary output (she remembers a few a month, which is a bit below the average of 2-3 a week) they play a big part in her creative life. Remembering only a handful of dreams, she says, makes them even more precious.
Sometimes those dreams arrive in the form of a sentence that lingers in her mind even after she wakes up. For example, these dream lines: “The pigs are coming today, hooray! The pigs are coming today!” became the start of, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs! of one of her many delightful picture books.
In I Carry My Mother, a poetry collection, her poem “Stopping By Dreams on a Lonely Evening,” was inspired by Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Night.” The poem was sparked by a dream Newman had shortly after her mother died, in which she appeared dressed in white, floating in the sky. “She said she was okay, and I shouldn’t cry,” Newman recalls.
It is fitting, perhaps, that she set her dream-poem within the cadences and rhyme scheme of Frost’s poem. another poem by Frost, “After Apple-Picking,” incorporates hypnogogic dream imagery when the poet describes drowsing off to sleep after working in an apple orchard all day long: “Magnified apples appear and disappear/stem end and blossom end and every fleck of russet showing clear.”
I memorized the entire poem during graduate school, and to this day, when I repeat it to myself while lying in bed, Frost’s rocking cadences lull me to sleep. After all, it is not only the imagery and emotion of poetry that can make it dreamy; the lulling music of poetry can put the reader in a soporific state as well.
Newman agrees that poets have a special relationship to dreams, and she often provides dream-related prompts to the students in her writing classes. The connection between dreams and poetry can be illustrated simply by pulling a book of poetry off a shelf, Newman says. “Open to the table of contents and you’ll almost always find a poem with the word dream in the title,” she says.
Once, as a young woman working at East West Books in New York City, she was approached by a customer needing her help. “We got to talking and she said, ‘Well, what do you do when you’re not in this book store?’” When Newman replied that she was a poet, the customer said, “Ah, then I will leave you alone to dream,” before drifting away. The memory itself, she says, is almost like a dream.
“I think as poets we have a rich inner life and dreams are definitely a part of that. Dreams are messages that come from some mysterious place, which is often the same mysterious place that poems come from. So, it’s just about trying to be awake and tapping into something beyond our conscious self.”
© 2021 Tzivia Gover, all Rights Reserved
More S’news from Tzivia & Lesléa
BREAKING S’NEWS: Lesléa and Tzivia’s children’s book, How to Sleep Tight Through the Night, is forthcoming from Storey Publishing in 2022. Stay tuned for details.
Don’t miss out on the latest S’news
Declare November Poetry Month, Too
Who says poetry only gets one month a year? And who wants to wait until April to wax poetic?
I’m declaring this November to be Poetry Month, too! That’s because I’ll be joining the Center for New Americans (CNA) in the 30 Poems in November fundraiser.
Each year poets in western Massachusetts are invited to participate in a month-long literary equivalent of a charity road race for CNA, a local organization that supports immigrants in our communities. Every day in November writers composes poems while friends and family make donations to encourage their efforts.
Last year CNA raised $60,000 to support immigrants. This year’s goal is $65,000. I’m going to write a poem-a-day in November to help them reach that goal. And you can, too!
Add poetry to your life this fall:
1. Support a poet. Visit www.cnam.org to learn about the 30 Poems in November fundraiser, and select any poet on the list who you’d like to encourage with a donation. You can donate to my page HERE.
2. Become a 30 Poems in November poet. Register with cnam.org and make your poems matter.
3. Get help writing dreamy poems in November. Enroll in The Poetic Dream writing workshop and receive weekly inspiration, prompts, and support for writing poems based on dreams. (Click for details and to enroll.)
STOPPING BY DREAMS ON A LONELY EVENING
Whose face this is I think I know,
I recognize from long ago.
My mother, can it really be?
For days on end I’ve missed her so.
For nights on end, so desperately
I’ve shut my eyes in hopes to see
My mother smiling with delight
And reaching out her hand to me.
She floats by in a shroud of white
And whispers, “Hush now, I’m all right.
You promised me you wouldn’t weep.”
And then she disappears from sight.
My dream is lovely, dark and deep
And I’ve a promise now to keep,
And years to hold her in my sleep
And years to hold her in my sleep.
“Stopping By Dreams On A Lonely Evening” copyright © 2015 Lesléa Newman from I Carry My Mother (Headmistress Press). Used by permission of the author.
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