Writing About Dreams Without Writing an Inspirational Poster
Dreams are the most inspirational subject in poetry and the most likely to be a poster. A judge on the three moves that turn a dream poem into a real one, the test that tells you if the poem is about the dream or about you, and the one image that always works.
Dreams are the most inspirational subject in poetry, and they are the most likely to be a poster. Every contest pile has a stack of dream poems that are about the stars and the sky and the reaching and the becoming, and the inspiration is the thing that makes the poem a poster instead of a poem.
The dream poem that works is not about the dream. It is about the person who is dreaming.
The poster trap
The poster poem is the one that tells you how good the dream is. The reaching, the striving, the becoming, the way the dream is the thing that makes life worth living. It is accurate and it is flat, because the dream is the subject and the subject is the one thing the reader already knows.
A poem about dreams should not describe the dream. It should describe what the dream does to the person who is dreaming it.
The three moves that turn a dream poem into a real one
Move one: put a person in it. The dream poem that works has a person in it, a child, a friend, a self. The dream is the stage; the person is the play. The poem is about the person in the dream, not the dream itself.
Move two: give the dream a body. The dream should be doing something to the body, the hands that are reaching, the eyes that are looking up, the feet that are on the ground. If the dream is just sitting there, it is a backdrop. If it is doing something to the body, it is a subject.
Move three: let the dream change you. The best dream poems are the ones where the speaker is different at the end than they were at the beginning, and the dream is the thing that changed them. The dream is the agent; the poem is the change.
The question that decides
Here is the question I ask when I am judging a dream poem: is this poem about the dream, or is it about the person in the dream? If the answer is the dream, it is a poster. If the answer is the person, it is a poem.
The poster poem says 'this is how good it is'. The real dream poem says 'this is what the dream did to me'. The difference is the difference between a poster and a life.
A worked example
Bad: 'I have a dream and I am reaching for the stars and I will not give up until I get there.' The dream is the subject; the speaker is absent.
Better: 'I have learned to say the word 'dream' out loud without feeling silly, and I have become the person who says it to strangers on the train.' The dream is the agent; the speaker is the person who is changed by it. The poem is about the person who has been changed by the dream, not the dream itself.
Where it goes wrong
The trap is the poem that is a celebration of the dream. The celebration is not a poem; it is a poster. The poem is the thing that the dream did to the person who was in it, and the doing is the work.
If you want to see a dream poem that is about the person, the prompts library has a set on aspiration and the self, and the contest window is open when the draft is ready. The dream is the stage. The person is the play.
Keep reading
For the craft side, the motif module covers the deeper method. The symbolism module is the page to read next, and the contest is where the work goes when it is done.
By Writory Editorial, for Writory.
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