… [In any case: thank you, Scott, for nudging me (us) into this]…

Tony Hoagland’s Application for Release from the Dream

Even now, the book's title itself does something to me. I cannot stop circling around it. Feeling its wholeheartedness. Or its tyranny. Or its banter.

I had approached Application for Release from the Dream with this in mind: it was the first book of poetry Tony published while he was battling cancer.^[1] But those few poems that brush against chemotherapy take my attention to somewhere past needles and veins.

For example, Ode to the Republic, which opens this way:

It’s going to be so great when America is just a second fiddle
and we stand on the sidelines and watch the big boys slug it out.

Old men reading the Times on benches in Central Park
will smile and say, “Let Brazil take care of it.”

That’s from the version of the poem published before the book, whereas “France” replaces “Brazil” in the book. Holding that changed line in my head, my perspective shifts from ‘I don’t care, let some other random country take care of it’ to something that gives pause, stings a bit and… asks to be taken more seriously. And that seriousness puts me back into the poem in which the line “It’s so good to be unimportant” doesn’t sound sarcastic.

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Writing this review has made me read and experience these poems more closely than before, but none of it comes easy to me. I am happier when I’m turned away from the task of writing to read and re-read one of the poems. When it’s echoing, and my mind, after all the obstacles, is lending itself to the poem. I struggle to describe it in this review, but Tony pours into his poems things I feel as real. He more than anyone else “taught” me to enjoy poetry and to appreciate it. I’m aware it could be just me.^[2]

I had a conversation today with a friend, across the Atlantic. Unreasonable, he says, the political directions of many countries. He looks genuinely concerned, gives a slight shake with his head. Asks me how I look at it, and I confess. Unexpectedly for the past couple of months, I have been in the poems of this book. I hear about world events, but when I lie awake at night, a side door to the poem opens without a key. Or I get an idea to write a section that will say what I don't know how to say. (Record; go back to sleep.) He didn't criticize me, just kept still, looking at me with a quiet delight in his eyes. Maybe he thought for a moment that he'd like that for himself.

If you will, give Please, Don’t a read; nobody has prepared me for what's ahead, either.

Please, Don’t

Without thinking much about it, I have been skeptical about the exuberant happiness in the poem. And, for the record: plants can’t understand words. But I start to suspect that my main objection is not about that. In the hypothetical case where they can, would I still have reservations? I decide to check.

Having spent time with the first part of the poem, I feel its joy rub off on me. ☺️ Doubly enjoyable “all Dizzy / Gillespie” makes two toppling images somehow both swoon and squeal, as well as bring joy of cognition and admiration to it. It also brings up images of silly four year olds, goofing around, high on being four years old.

I come back to "Forgetful little lotus-eaters"—it strikes me as odd. (Plants eating plants?) I look it up. Although a negative connotation, and not the only one ("hydroholics"), I feel no judgement from the speaker. He is boldly letting their joy go on unbridled. And mine.

But when I read the speaker’s final question ("What would you possibly gain from being right?"), I’m looking inwards, and it’s not a four-year old I see.

It's the provoked adult.

The Story of the Mexican Housekeeper

This one is not available online, and I won’t say anything that might spoil the reader’s experience.

The poem begins with what feels like a familiar social stereotype of a Mexican worker in the U.S. My own perception gets shaped by that first setting, but I don’t get to keep it.

Her anger has touched something uncomfortable in me. Like I wasn’t given a chance to explain to her that I’m on her side. Like I don’t belong.

By the end, the distance created by “Please, Señor” makes me check myself. What feels unsettling is not only the idea of her life in fear of la migra. I have an idea what’s going on, why she reacted—and I am pretty sure I am not supposed to know such things about her. Even if I was her brother. Except perhaps with a strange permission literature seems to grant us.

Anonymous

It’s a poem I couldn’t enjoy fully.

This is not a perfect collection, Tony isn't perfect, I'm not perfect.

I can breathe easier now.

The poem has surprised me, and I want to preserve that surprise rather than name the poem for you with a warning.

After a couple of stanzas, the speaker earns my sympathies: he weighs his words, checks himself. He tones down his rhetoric while still voicing his discomfort, and this makes me trust him even more.

Near the end, the poem confronts me with something that bothers me, only not in the way it bothers the speaker. I feel like he is trying to recruit me, catching me off guard. Like a demand to accommodate him, or as if I'm a therapist, and I have to make allowances for him.

I feel myself becoming critical. "Get off my lawn" kind of thing. And I don't like that.

After I cool off, I notice that the poem starts by describing a misleading communication. I am alert again. Then another stanza provokes an eerie feeling of being seen by the poem: I have taken myself too seriously.

I still have that critic in me, I know that. You know, like, an old man being told he was yelling at the TV. And missed breakfast.

Also Anonymous

Anonymous for a different reason: it seems to have a near match to my personal history and even the takeout, cooked and ready to go.

And yet, I am slow to eat it. At first, I keep hearing my own voice. "Yeah. I know." "Sure, that's what happens." Instead of familiarity, I start to get confused. It's like I'm arriving at a station where the poem is meeting me and holding some of my own luggage. Highly improbable; I keep checking myself. I’m not connecting to the poem—or to my own experiences.

A day passes. Part of me sees my knowledge pulling me away from the experience. I remain cautious not to step on "such a shame" or "must have been hard."

More days. By this time, I know most of it by heart, and with it, I can feel the little boy before he knew who he was. I don’t see how the colors fit in ("purple", "blue"), and the poem's ending still stops my feet. Even so, that boy has gotten eyes.

Last night and this morning, some knowledge about the remaining questions is forming.

But it doesn't matter. It stays in the shadow of the little boy.

Please, Don’t, Take Two

I say parts of the poem aloud, and suddenly there is a voice in my head.

A feminine one.

It's intelligent, warm, close. The made up word ("and swobtoggle wildly / around,…") is sweet on her lips. I can almost hear a smile in her voice as they are "…bumping accidentally into their / slender neighbors," as if she enjoys what they are feeling.

When she says "But please don't mention it," the words are forming slightly slower, just enough to make sure I hear her. Her timbre doesn't change, her warmth and intelligence are still there: "Not yet." She would like me to stay.

And I don't want to leave her.

The Complex Sentence

The line "in her head?"^[3] gives me a jolt, and I am no longer comfortable with the position of an observer of someone who stands at a distance to her younger self who took a year to move closer to her own experience. I have wanted to say more here, but that would have been dissecting the body that is still alive.

I just feel for her young self. Confused, misunderstood, and lonely. That's the strongest feeling, but not the only one. Her present day self—I wish she could feel for her young self what I do. She would feel such warmth.

The Low Point / Crossing Water

Maybe poetry is a waste of time. Some words on paper in odd configuration and I am feeling the warmth of my emotions for a non-existent being based on my interpretation—which, admittedly, I am not sharing even with the author.

The past couple of days, stuck on the same page with the same poem, even plainly reading the poem is not working. I keep falling out, losing track of it, sometimes mid-sentence.

Maybe I want to keep being that guy who has it now.

Maybe I am afraid of not having it, now that I have developed a taste for it. Part of me is defeated: something in me knows how to interpret—or that's what I thought.

All this, when I was just about to open a shop, Apogee Poetry Analysis.

Whatever Crossing Water is about, I'm outside it. It starts with images of swimming to the other side of the lake and of a florist shop. Oh—I know what that is about. But, I lose the support and confidence it has given me when I read the lines that name it explicitly: "I get the strange idea that this / is what is waiting at the end of life". What is this poem about then, if it's willing to toss that in, to lose that stake? I read again to find something to hold on to, but I keep getting interrupted by the poem's returning to the reeds growing calmly in shallow water, their spears, their blossoms, purses of flowers, back to spears, back to "flowers loose-petaled as memory"… What is it about that image that appears five times in the poem? Seems like it should be obvious, and I’m missing out on it.

It’s getting late. I’m going to cancel the lease tomorrow and return all the equipment I ordered for the shop—except the microscope.

The Why

Before I sign off for the day, I want to tell you something that might explain why I keep at it.

Twenty years ago, I watched Mulholland Dr. as a puzzle to solve. I put my attention on retaining the scenes in my head as much as possible; I purposely avoided trying to put them together. When the movie finished, I moved to the bedroom and lay face down on the pillow for 30 minutes. (Emptiness in the gut where love left.) The movie kept buzzing in my body for two days.

A few years later, a poem of Tony's: Wasteful Gesture Only Not. Just a handful of stanzas, then what a couple of them have been holding back—and I'm held by something larger than sadness at the edge of tears. Two days.

I’ve been spending many unrushed days with this collection.

Rebound / Crossing Water

It’s the morning after, and at almost the same moment, I experience tenderness for what he is talking about and for my trying and failing over the past two days. Writing about it reminds me of a game of telephone: I’m standing on one end, and my fingers are typing on the other. The words that come out on the other end never seem to do justice to the experience—which pushes back, making it all alive in me again.

I know it's inevitable to lose some of that perspective and that feeling as the impression wears off—and to forget.

But during my walk this morning, that tenderness had stopped me mid-step.

Misunderstandings

I still keep hearing

And I try to harmonize with songs
the lonesome sparrow sings—
there are no keys inside the Gates of Eden

feeling encouraged even if alone, except

when Google told me Bob Dylan sings “kings” instead of “keys”,

I felt more alone.

The Official Review of Jacob (Cob) Solitaro's Application for Release from the Dream

Due to the unfortunate timing, the review being published today is coming too late for it to be useful to the applicant. The main reason is that this body (the reviewing body) has been delayed and deadlocked. Perhaps the timing is fortunate enough, though: as this review goes into publication, the application remains undecided. In any case, by publishing this review we hope to provide information useful to potential applicants and to the dream at large.

As will become clear, there are many differing perspectives among the members of the body. However, we would like to state certain things upon which we all agree.

It should first be said that the indecision is a reflection solely on this body's ability—or rather, its inability. The application itself is found to be of very high quality, perhaps the highest quality writing application this body has ever reviewed. The contents of it have shown to the members various aspects of the applicant's dream, which made us all reflect with the applicant on it.

We salute all applicants for working within the dream personal to them. Perhaps most importantly, in writing the application, this applicant has not assumed a position of dispenser of ultimate wisdom. Even this body does not possess such wisdom. We stand at the gates ourselves, having never walked through them.

We would like to remind the dream and all potential applicants that there are many different reviewing bodies. This reviewing body is well aware that had this application reached some other reviewing body in time, the decision might not have been delayed or deadlocked. We find it worth noting, especially given that the applicant earnestly intended release.

We’ve experienced a minor setback in our work. Having read the application to the last poem, one member left this body, declaring his intent to use the remaining time to walk out the gates. (It’s not clear if he’s done so; he may still be in the process of writing his own application.) The rest of the body stayed committed to the process and performed the duty assigned.

The delay is also partly due to the different backgrounds and communication styles of the members of this body. We struggled to align internally, particularly the analytical members with the “gut feel” members of the body. Periodically, they seemed to be at odds with each other, their communication styles interfering with the review process and delaying it. Eventually, we adopted a working structure that enabled better alignment. Our final adopted principles did not require a compromise from any member. We briefly present them here for accountability and potential use in other circumstances.

Our starting position was that we can interpret everything we find in a work of art, which this application is, as intentional. Approaching the application this way, this body has been able to generate a wide range of interpretations and lively discussions. Based on our experience, we do not believe that to be the case in reviews that criticize a work of art for its "mistakes" or "lack of insight." The intentionality principle did not allow us to know what the intention of a poem is, beyond that of presenting us with it exactly as it is. We never know what the artist's dream is.

The adoption of the intentionality principle and its corollary—that we never presume to know the artist's dream—resulted in a process that then thrived, albeit haltingly, on oddities, apparent contradictions, and vague or ambiguous phrases. Other bodies might characterize such aspects as negligence or even find them personally offensive—as one can be expected to do when presuming to know the artist's intention or dream, or when the evaluation process stops too soon. In our case, they have become a catalyst for interpretation and, along with that, our subjective impression of the application—precisely what we have been requested to oversee and use in order to dispose the request.

We turn now to the subject of this review. The entire application is too large to be reviewed in detail, and the detailed review is of no use if the applicant cannot see it. We therefore limit our exposition to the poem that generated the emblematic agreements and disagreements. All members agree that the poem Wasp is a good case study. For example, all members appreciate the self-deprecating humor with which the poem begins. Even so, this body is undecided on whether that in and of itself presents sufficient grounds to approve the application.

While some members of the body point to the speaker's choice of intentionally dehumanizing words—"so-called humans"—as the reason to deny the application, most others draw attention to the internal context of the poem. They see in it evidence of the speaker's awareness of the dream: the apparent step of excluding oneself from the social environment itself a demonstration of that awareness. It's also been said that the phrase itself may be a signal of the illusion the applicant is aware of.

Similarly, some point out that Wasp ostensibly rejects clarity. "Don't speak to me please / about clarity and proportionate response." Such a rejection may well keep the applicant in the dream. Yet, others consider the poem as part of the entire application and see in it movement resisting reduction, even on the topic of clarity. Although we are agnostic about the applicant's exact reason for including this poem, some consider the poem's reflection on human condition evidence enough of the applicant's awareness and acceptance of his own dream.

One member highlights the applicant’s internal tension, which apparently keeps him both producing the poem and stuck in the dream, raising an interesting hypothetical question: given a choice between the release and being the poet, what might the applicant choose? This question is purely academic for present purposes, and a speculative answer is of no concern.

One member frequently requested to be quoted verbatim. Although we find the request to be self-serving, we allow for it primarily because of its brevity, if not its usefulness:

Brea-the.

The lack of response from some remote members of this body was also partly responsible for this review’s late arrival. No doubt, we shall hear from them immediately following the publishing of this review. However, given the present state of affairs, the final disposition of this review will not change regardless of any further input.

One member would have granted the release simply based on the title of the collection. We consider it worth noting for the speed of resolution, if nothing else. However, as things are, this member was unable to prevail, something we recognize could be due to a lack of clarity the rest of us have. We should point out that this member would grant release even to those who have not submitted an application.

As demonstrated above, this body has no way out of the present disagreements, and is unable to make the decision on the application. We wish all future applicants all the best in their endeavors.

This review is submitted and is to be published in its entirety pursuant to the affirmative promotion clause of Cosmic Order 310-20260220, provided, of course, that it passes the snicker test.

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