April 10, 12 noon PAHB 428
“Poetry and the Root of Dreams"
A Colloquium by Michael Fallon
…We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. –The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148-158
Powerfully visionary and disturbing dreams have not gone away with the shaman, the dream visions of the Middle Ages, the Gothic novel, or Surrealism. The language of dreams will always fascinate artists, story tellers, and poets because it is the language of the imagination, the vocabulary of deepest meaning. This colloquium will examine the relation between poetry and dreams, as well as the process by which some of my own poems—rooted in and inspired by dreams—have metamorphosed into poems.