Having just read something here on WOL and considering the inspiration for some of my own work I pose this:

What is the significance/importance/benefit/quality of the content of dreams as a poetical muse?

Thanks Graham for posting something to knock me out of the irritability of trying to knock something into shape.

Your question minds me of some of the Chaucerian dream poems we dipped into at uni and also the beautiful Pearl poem.

I understand that you are talking about using dream in a modern sense, but I can`t help wondering if the idea of a modern dream poetry could not introduce into poems what seems to be so rare these days namely: some real sense of the eternally beautiful. (it is so really rare that I almost feel embarrassed mentioning the word)

Even at the competition-winning level today, the poetry seems to be mainly `about` Modernity (often with some
kind of (`clever`) slant to it) as if to shun any suspicion of formal or themic tradition of beauty as somehow rather `sissy`...I get the same feeling about the other kind of (male) poetry that piles in the macho metaphor in orded to get the manly effect (I always feel as though it is puffing out it`s chest).


That couldn`t be said about some of the female poets who`s use of `butchily`unladylike language proves that they have no intention of ever being accused of using any flouncily frock-like female metaphors whatsoever.

(Blimey ! I`ve realised what I have just said! :) )

To get back to dream poetry: It can be used for many purposes of course beside the beautiful. I would like to see it used again.

Harry when it's safe to come out of hiding :)) I think you might be onto something.

Fully agree with everything you've said there Harry (although perhaps I would have been a smidgeon subtler ;) ).

What does the phrase 'eternally beautiful' actually mean?

Ah, Steven!...`meaning` and the happy linguistic world of
philosophy, semiotics, hermeneutics, ontology, detonation
substance, literature, lit crit, Ogden and Richards,, etc: not to
mention the stuff and un-stuff, and mini-stuff involved in the
Theories of relativity and quantum mechanics versus the old
dependable -stay in one place-Newtonionism...Nevertheless,
Given all the above, could you define for us what you mean by
the word `mean` in your sentence?


(Richards above should read Richardson)

I too would like to know exactly what you mean by 'eternally beautiful'. It looks as though you can't define it so what about giving us examples of what you consider to be 'eternally beautiful'?

I just googled it and it seems that Eternally Beautifully is either a cosmetics firm, whose website seems to be temporarily out of action, somewhat ironically, or a beauty salon on Crow Rd, Glasgow.
I am not sure about the notion of Eternal Beauty, in terms of dreams and poetry. It sounds too absolute a term to be trustworthy. I think that, when writing certain of my favourites of my own poems, they have come to me in a sort of partial trance or dreamlike state, when the balance of my mind is (beautifully) disturbed, which I suppose removes the barriers, the internal censor, so forth. Or is this one?

but thy eternal beauty shall not fade...
when in eternal lines to time thou growest.

Isn't it simply love? Love is in the eye of the beholder.

I subscribe to the psychologists' view that dreams are the common ground of conscious and unconscious thought. The 3 million year old man, woman, (both) in us all putting forward direction to the living day consciousness of thoughts.

Rich then, for poetry, and I am reminded of Keats:
a poem should remind us of our highest thoughts.

A poem may seem uncanny yet be true of itself, we move into symbolism and race memories which speak to us albeit distantly. Such stuff as dreams, and so on.

'Eternally beautiful'? Personally I figured that what Harry was getting at was less strictly tied to this phrase and more simply a loose association with a romantic style of poetry and phrasing...Shakespeare's sonnets for example, the classics.

And I agreed before and I'll agree again.

So essentially we have no real idea of what it means, just some vague notions about things that last a long time...

So let me ask:

Is an African fetish mask eternally beautiful?

Is the prow of a Viking longship eternally beautiful?

Is a painting by Van Gogh eternally beautiful?

Is an Australian aborigine painting eternally beautiful?

Is a Chinese painting scroll eternally beautiful?

Is a painting by Corot more eternally beautiful than a painting by Monet?

And that's just the visual arts. Let's try music:

Is Smokey Robinson a better songwriter than Bob Dylan?

Is Mozart more eternally beautiful than Debussy?

Is Chinese opera less eternally beautiful than Rossini?

Then literature:

Is Basho eternally beautiful?

Are the Psalms in their original Hebrew more eternally beautiful than in the King James translation?

Etc etc etc...

Beauty as they say is in the eye of the beholder. All of us bring our cultural upbringing and prejudices with us when we look at, read or listen to a work of art. There is no definition of beauty that can possibly account for everything that is beautiful in the world.

There are things I dislike about poetry (and over-macho is probably one of them - I agree with Harry on that one.)

But while I want my own poems to sound as good and true as I possibly can make them, I'm not over worried if they don't conform to some arbitrary standard of 'eternal beauty', especially if that's a sure fire way of draining all the life out of a poem.

I just love how these discussions tend to evaporate into the highbrow ether.

Any chance of reading the question I posed again chaps zzzzzz!

Graham,
Stop being a spoil-sport! :)

I`m on the point of answering the question...give us time.

I promise...there`ll be something about dreams in it.

(First, Julian, if that cosmetics firm comes
back on to the website, don`t forget who
your friends have always been) :)

I apologise for all that `meaning` linguistic
and relativity waffle that made it look like
I was dodging Steven`s question. It was a
preparation for the present day doubts of
all exact meaning that his comments indeed
fetched up.

By eternal I mean long lastingness and by
beautiful I mean that which is longlastingly
admired as such.

Dominic`s reference to Shakespeare`s poem
is a good way to begin as it gives something
definite to work on:

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,


The first two lines state that the adressee is
more lovely and temporate than a summers
day...The next six state the effect of chance,
time, and change on the plants, temperature,
and appearance of the natural season he is
comparing the addressee with...the following
lines state this will not happen to the one who
is addressed, nor an appropriately wandering
and shadowy death. This is attributed to the
eternity of the lines he is writing in the eyes
and breath of living men.

This is not trying to state the obvious but just
one readers account of what `s in the poem. A
fuller and far superior account is in Wikipedia
sonnet 18 (thank God for the internet!)

The poem has been admired as beautiful for going
on for five hundred years now, which satisfies my own criteria of longlastingness of beauty and time.

But to come down from the heights:
My point about rarity might be best explained by
reference to Adam Newey`s remark in the Guardian
when reviewing Glyn Maxwell`s book.. `On Poetry`
some years ago.. `The whole direction of the 20th -
century was towards weeding out poetry that was
`poetic`. I think he is right, and also his statment that
it (the `poetic`) had become `probably a pretty good
definition of bad poetry`. I also believe that this is the
reason that Hart`s recent statement (vis-a-vis Duffy`s
gas meter) that `no wonder people have so little time
for poetry any more` is so depressingly true. I know
that, at times the higher echelons give a passing nod
to the old poetic forms but they shy the `poetic` as if
it were the plague....As- I believe-do those teachers
who teach would be practitioners in classes. This has
resulted (I.M.O.) - together with the general absence
of the old familiar rhyming in modern poetry -in the
alienation of the generally reading public from poetry
in general.

We are now at a situation where a poem blogged on
our own lowly site has probably more chance of being
read by a public poetry seeker on the internet as would
the (largely unpurchased) collection of the poetry prize
winners in Amazon or the bookshops. We should not let
our own lively enthusiasm for the art which we all love
blind us to the fact that poetry at the public reading level
is practically ignored. (novels seem to be doing fine)

I often wonder what free style could do with themes like
Tennyson`s `tranced` Lotus Eater or Coleridge`s `uncanny`
Christabel. Both are types of dream poetry and it would
be hard to do without the rhyme or rhythm. (Mind, you
could say Christabel is more of a nightmare so free might
suit it better) I wonder what free could make of the Elegy
of Gray (The way Dr Johnson was forced -against his will
almost - to admit the accepted status of Gray`s elegy has
something to say about what we`re talking about here.
(but what.....?

Steven,
Is there a reason for the word `sound` (rather than mean)
in your last paragraph)

"Is there a reason for the word `sound` (rather than mean)
in your last paragraph)"

Yes there is, Harry. A poem's meaning is in its sound as much as it is in its 'content.' Poems happen in the ear first.

As Basil Bunting, "Compose aloud. Poetry is sound."

The problem with that word 'poetic' is that for many it conjures up a kind of rhetorical afflatus where a spade becomes 'an Arcadian digging implement' or a kind of hey-nonny-noh rhythm that just looks silly. Or the over-inflated wordy windiness of late Swinburne. Or a lazy kind of musical prettiness.

Bunting compared writing poetry to masonry: "Take a chisel to write," he said.

There's always been a kind of struggle between earthiness and airiness in British poetry, between empirical reality and immediate meaning and a dream language that soars and puzzles. You can see that in Shakespeare himself, the "upstart crow" whose sonnets are so often questioning and extending what a sonnet can do, whose plays veer from high rhetoric to groundling chatter sometimes in the space of a page.

One comment on 'meaningful content': the visual and the heard (as in sound) are a part of meaning; but I wasn't intending to say they're the whole of it. There's a world of difference in meaning between "To be or not to be," and "Should I or shouldn't I top myself?" One is poetry, one is most definitely prose.

I would agree with most of Steven`s last comment.

But about the `to be or not to be` and `should I or shouldn`t I top myself`:....If the (contrasting?) `sounds` and typographical `run`of the words are part of the meaning, what else would be required to make either qualify as part of a poem?

Or (Graham is watching us) :)

Coleridges:

`The thin gray cloud is spread on high` and `It`s cloudy out`.

What is the significance/importance/benefit/quality of the content of dreams as a poetical muse?

I know it's useless but I'll try anyway!

At my age, Graham, it is the monopoly source of inspiration for my erotic poetry.
(Glad to bring you back on track)

Dreams are the subconscious. Subconscious thought and poetry go hand in hand. It's an 'internal' visual aid if you will.

Also you can approach it from the angle of Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech; metaphorical dreams = political/social commentary in poetry. Words to inspire...

But woah...hang on...

`The thin gray cloud is spread on high` and `It`s cloudy out`.

I'd only say 'it's cloudy out' if there are individual clouds, not one massive grey one.

Oh, all right David!

How about:
`The night is chill: the forest bare:`
and `it`s a cold night in the bald woods`

(i `ate criticism when it`s right) :)

I recently wrote a dream poem. I think it works as a poem; but a lot of the time recounting dreams can be as boring as someone else's acid trip (not that I've had one myself mind.)

Actually, I think both of Harry's lines would work in the right poem (the second line: 2 unstressed syllables, 2 stressed, 2 unstressed, 2 stressed: interesting metrically don't ya think?)

Better Harry ;)

And I agree with Steven. Both have their own style which would suit their own unique poem.

Massive Graham! There have been so many times poetry lines have been received while dreaming, or waking up from sleep, or falling asleep. Other times poetry titles. One dream I had a back in 2013 inspired me to write a piece of doggerel called "Welcome To The Garden Gnome Shopping Channel". I'm not Sting, so I won't bore you with the actual dream. Most recently the title "Fearporn Orgasmatron", and some of its first verse landed inside my head as I was waking up.
So many, so many..