The Dream World, Alison Pick

“Even when narrative flings itself free/ a net of meaning holds,” explains Alison Pick in “The In-Breath,” included in her second collection of poems.  The Dream World has indeed cast aside literal narrative in favour of exploring ideas.  Pick’s voice is dreamy, calm, and unhurried as she lingers on the central concepts and images of the book—snowfall in rural landscapes, aloneness, memory, feeling at home.  While many of the poems show that Pick is a master of description, at times, The Dream World is drowsy and repetitive, and Pick’s net of meaning unravels.

Pick is at her best when anchoring her poems with scenes of real life.  In “Not Talking,” Pick intones, “Somewhere close/ the river’s mouth is choked with last fall’s/ leaves.  Nothing left to say about/ all our endless nothing-said.”  In “Scrabble,” one of the collection’s most intriguing poems, Pick confesses, “I’m making this up/ out of the letters I drew.”  “Scrabble” contains two of the best lines in the whole collection: “The way your glance makes more of me;/ slide your R in next to my E.”

The metaphors can be a little slippery and sluggish.  In “Departure,” Pick pronounces, “At midnight, the sun is a showgirl in sequins/ too drunk to drag from the stage.”  “Dog-Eared” wanders into cliché: “I fold down the tips of my memory’s book…the rest of our future, unwritten…the red rose you gave me.”  “Deontology” begins well enough—“Ten minds perk like coffee pots,/ turned on and promptly forgotten,” but ends in punch line, joking, “little Nietzsche/aims to copy Hegel’s paper…God is Dead, Friedrich replies, and bonks/ young Georg over the head with a robot.” 

Some of this collection comes across as weary or lacking in urgency; consequently, Pick’s hushed, snowy landscapes emerge as the highlights of The Dream World.