Night Vision, Revision: How a Dream Became a Poem

Abstract

What is the function of poetry? Should it respond to the issues of the day, or is it in thrall to the depths, called only to speak for the mysteries? These questions bedevil the poet as she struggles with a disturbing dream. She finds herself in Istanbul, a city she's never visited in waking life. The dream gives her the repugnant role of invader, a functionary of the patriarchy—compelled by unseen forces to take over an Ottoman-era mansion belonging to a young woman of distinguished family. The poet has no idea what to make of all this. The dream demands a poem. The poem demands a meander through Turkish literature. It is a difficult poem, demanding many revisions that require night vision—predawn wrestlings with the poem's essential nature. As the poem begins to quicken, to come to life, it reveals itself as both a messenger from the “Spirit of the Times,” full of refugees, wars, terror, and a messenger from the “Spirit of the Depths,” full of the ancient goddess, unearthed at Çatal Hüyük in Turkey by Marija Gimbutas; it is both a political poem and a spiritual poem. And even after the poem gets its name, “Some Questions for the Dream Maker,” feels complete to the poet, has gone out into the world and been published (twice), it demands yet one thing more—this essay—its creation story.