Sarah Arvio

night thoughts: 70 dream poems and notes from an analysis by Sarah Arvio is a poetry collection that defies convention in its cathartic purpose as a series of free-association dream poems with accompanying notes on those dreams from the poet at the time she was tackling some serious trauma. It is more than a collection of poems and notes about those dreams they capture, it is a memoir written as she uncovers some deeply traumatic events in her childhood as she was on the cusp of womanhood.

“It’s easy to forget how complex and intense are the thoughts of children, and how everlasting. I mean that the thoughts last in the mind, enacting their meanings, even when they seem to be forgotten.” (page 132)

Arvio’s notes are essential in many ways to the understanding of her dream poems, which are often surreal and disjointed. The notes help carve out her images and how they associate to one another and which dreams came to her in the same span of time. She breaks down her word choices for lines in the poems, the origins of words and how their meanings are uncannily related to the trauma she experienced and subsequently forgot. She also provides insight into the artwork that she saw and that reminded her of the trauma and how certain colors appear and reappear in her poems because of their relation to the trauma.

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2013/04/night-thoughts-70-dream-poems-and-notes-from...… (mer)