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    The Dream of Reason
    The Dream of Reason
    The Dream of Reason
    Ebook75 pages23 minutes

    The Dream of Reason

    By Jenny George

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    About this ebook

    Jenny George’s debut showcases an astonishing poetic talent, a new voice that is intensely focused, patient, and empathic. The Dream of Reason explores the paradoxical relationships between humans and the animals we imagine, keep, fear, and consume. Titled after Goya’s grotesque bestiary, George’s own dreamscape is populated by purring moths, bats that crawl like goblins, and livestock—especially pigs, whose spirit and slaughter inform a central series of portraits. The poems invite moments of stark realism into a spacious, lucid realm just outside of time—finding revelation in stillness, intimacy in violence, and vision in language that lifts from the dark.

    From “Threshold Gods”:

    I saw a bat in a dream and then later that week
    I saw a real bat, crawling on its elbows
    across the porch like a goblin.
    It was early evening. I want to ask about death.
    But first I want to ask about flying.

    Jenny George lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she runs a foundation for Buddhist-based social justice. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateMay 1, 2018
    ISBN9781619321847
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      Book preview

      The Dream of Reason - Jenny George

      I

      Threshold Gods

      I saw a bat in a dream and then later that week

      I saw a real bat, crawling on its elbows

      across the porch like a goblin.

      It was early evening. I want to ask about death.

      But first I want to ask about flying.

      The swimmers talk quietly, standing waist-deep in the dark lake.

      It’s time to come in but they keep talking quietly.

      Above them, early bats driving low over the water.

      From here the voices are undifferentiated.

      The dark is full of purring moths.

      Think of it—to navigate by adjustment, by the beauty

      of adjustment. All those shifts and echoes.

      The bats veer and dive. Their eyes are tiny golden fruits.

      They capture the moths in their teeth.

      Summer is ending. The orchard is carved with the names of

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