And then came Adrienne Rich and her poem ‘(The Floating Poem, Unnumbered).’ Sex, yes, but sex held fast by love. Though I had sought lesbian life in other texts, all those I’d found centered around sex alone, around lonely lives in which I couldn’t-didn’t want to-see myself. two people together is a work / heroic in its ordinariness.’ Two women together, two writers. Despite nails jutting from the boards like punji sticks, I bellied my way to the edge and perched my book above the water: The Dream of a Common Language. I read and reread the central section of ‘21 Love Poems’: ‘without tenderness, we are in hell. Even at dawn, the only coolness was the dew on the grass, the just-cut blade-tips painting my ankles as I walked to the dock. But sometimes that’s all there is to do.'Central Florida in the ‘90s-tourists in mouse-ears and Benny Hinn preaching on TV, the culture stifling as the heat. I’m still not sure how to review this, other than to recount my experience as positive, that some of the poems hit me in the solar plexus while others skimmed over the surface of my mind. It was also helpful to see someone else’s analysis of themes in this overtly feminist work. We didn’t always agree on favorite phrases, but I found myself appreciating their choices. I’m glad that it was there, it provided a dialogue I wouldn’t otherwise have with the poems.

My library copy included marginalia from some previous reader’s experience with the book. I don’t know if the fact that the poems held within The Dream of a Common Language were written between 19 makes them easier or more difficult to comment on, but there is enough of the broader human experience to give the reader plenty to think on. As I started I thought to myself, yes I can see turning back to these poems night after night while sitting near a campfire. It’s under a hundred pages and the opening page hits with a wallop. I can understand why this was a book that Strayed kept with her on the Pacific Crest Trail.

The Dream of a Common Language is the first one of 2023 for me (I have at least one other poetry collection on my TBR for the year) and while I’ve known about its existence since I read Cheryl Strayed’s Wildback in 2012, it took a Read Harder task to get it in my hands. Poetry is a genre that I have a terrible time reviewing but in my personal quest to keep reading the genre – and not give up on it – I find myself trying to about once a year.

The dream of a common language