In Your Dreams

Poetry. The poems to be found in this extraordinary book exert obsessive fascination, and they do so on numerous fronts. The title, IN YOUR DREAMS, suggests that this is a dream book; it is important to note, however, that the dreams are not materials of Ted Greenwald's inward musings. They are propelled outward, rather, to 'your dreams, ' which is to say ours--we of the shared, not-so-nice realities of the contemporary world. It is also important to note the affective import of the title: it is witty and slightly melancholy and caustic and confrontational. The poems reflect not some dreamy inner consciousness but on-going social processes with their intricate (and some might say relentless) patterns. Patterning is perceptible in the structure of the poems, and that is a manifest source of the technical fascination they yield. Indeed, Greenwald has produced a masterpiece of the American variable foot. But the emotional power of this utterly compelling book emerges from the inter-personal conditions that give the poems their thrust. The poems speak in and out of love, irritation, tension, wry amiability, nervous and unnerving intimacy; they represent daily interplay, quotidian perseverations; they resonate with comic intensity and the blues. That's it: they are beautiful and very bluesy--Lyn Hejinian