Antebellum Dream Book

by Elizabeth Alexander

In surprising turns through different American cities, mindsets, and eras, and through the strange rhythms of dreaming, the celebrated poet Elizabeth Alexander composes her own kind of improvisational jazz. Antebellum Dream Book offers a music of resistances as well as soaring flights of fancy: the conflicts of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and after; a mother's struggle to see through a postpartum fog; a vision in which the poet takes on the narrative voice of Muhammad Ali. The New York Times Book Review has said that "Alexander creates intellectual magic in poem after poem." In this stunning collection, she furthers her reputation as a vital and vivid poetic voice keenly attuned to our ideas of race, gender, politics, and motherhood.

Genres: Poetry, African American Literature

96 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2001

About the author

Elizabeth Alexander is a Quantrell Award-winning American poet, essayist, playwright, university professor, and scholar of African-American literature and culture. She teaches English language/literature, African-American literature, and gender studies at Yale University. Alexander was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard during the 2007-08 academic year.

Alexander's poems, short stories, and critical writings have been widely published in such journals and periodicals as The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Village Voice, The Women's Review of Books, and The Washington Post. Her play Diva Studies, which was performed at Yale's School of Drama, garnered her a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship as well as an Illinois Arts Council award.

On December 17th, 2008 it was announced that she will compose a poem which she shall recite at the Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama in January 2009.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Accessible and satisfying poems about race, the early days of motherhood, and a fertile dream life. The long central section is full of dreams – presumably actual ones that she had during the composition – recounted in remarkable and often very humorous detail. She writes of making love with Nat King Cole, taking a workshop led by Toni Morrison, and being in prison in Baltimore. Other poems are about black communities in D.C. (where she grew up) and Philadelphia, Muhammad Ali (in 12 “rounds”), and having a newborn.

Favorite lines:

“memory is romance / and race is romance”

“Philadelphia is burning and water- / melon is all that can cool it” [that enjambement so perfectly defies expectations!]

“106-year-old / Great-Aunt Kate / calls it ‘the dry grin,’ / what white people give you / when they want you to think / you are safe / when you’re not.”

“My thinking is a series of crosshatches / with holes like an old screen window / and the holes keep getting bigger.”

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is yet another book of poetry that sailed way over my head.  I don't understand what she is saying in most of the poems.  “Dream book” is an apt title since many of these poems are dreams; too bad for me, since I find descriptions of other people’s dreams to be uninteresting.

The few poems in this collection that are not dreams are truly spectacular!!  Islands: Number Four broke my heart.  Narrative: Ali was unique (and a fitting tribute to The Greatest).  Neonatology describes birth and new motherhood better than any other poem I've read.   

Five stars for those poems!!  

Two stars for the dream poems.

Islands Number Four
1.
Agnes Martin, Islands Number Four,
Repeated ovals on a grid, what appears
To be perfect is handmade, disturbed.
Tobacco brown saturates canvas to burlap,
Clean form from a distance, up close, her hand.
All wrack and bramble to oval and grid.
Hollows in the body, containers for grief.
What looks to be perfect is not perfect.

Odd oval portholes that flood with light.

2.
Description of a Slave Ship, 1789:
Same imperfect ovals, calligraphic hand.
At a distance, pattern. Up close, bodies
Doubled and doubled, serried and stacked
In the manner of galleries in a church,
In full ships on their sides or on each other.
Isle of woe, two-by-two, spoon-fashion,
Not unfrequently found dead in the morning.
Slave ships, the not pure, imperfect ovals,
Portholes through which they would never see home,
The flesh rubbed off their shoulders, elbows, hips.
Barracoon, sarcophagus, indestructible grief
Nesting in the hollows of the abdomen.
The slave ship empty, its cargo landed
And sold for twelve ounces of gold apiece

Or gone overboard. Islands. Aftermath.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first experience with Elizabeth Alexander's poetry and it certainly won't be my last! There were so many poems in this book that I just loved... 1968, Paul Says, The female seer will burn upon this pyre, and Postpartum Dream #12: Appointment to name a few. Such moving writing. I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of this book and letting Alexander open your eyes to new things!

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

If responsibility begins in dreams, this is a very responsible book; also funny, weird in the best ways, brilliant, luminous, and moving (especially the last poem.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some poems made an impact, but the dreaming associations were too abstract, most of the time, for me to connect with. So, while technically proficient, these are not my personal favorites.

[Will · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a couple poems which really seem to work—especially through Alexander's ability to set a fully-realized scene with a tiny palmful of words. Unfortunately, this brevity isn't always such a blessing; sometimes it makes the poems feel like they're rough drafts, full of initial bursts of inspiration but also full of perplexing movements and endings. Her poems use words sparingly though they hardly feel like they've been shorn down by multiple revisions. And then there are Alexander's constant references to pop-culture icons . . . For what purpose, I can only guess.

In all, I feel it's too dreamy, too meandering. This is the kind of flapdoodle hodgepodge that people always rave about being "pure music in the key of motherhood" or "jazz-induced meditations on the politics of the body," etc. etc. But it's just not as ground-breaking or radical as people would have you believe. Not as aurally playful either.

For instance, here's an entire goddamn poem:

"Receta Culinaria"

Make soup from this:

Shrimp shells for stock,
yams, mushrooms (portobello),
cilantro to taste.

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dreams of famous people, power and some nightmares, too. I was interested in reading her poetry after reading her essay in the New Yorker about her husband's death. Good imagery for a cold dark night.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid readable collection. A nice contrast of past history and the present.

[Lesley Looper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting collection of poems, many with an African American theme. One poem mentioned the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which I know. One of my favorite poems in this collection was "Paul Says."

[Nan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed. This IS a book of dreams. Too many of these dreams lack the musicality and the universality that turns a dream into a poem.