The First Dream
The wind is ghosting around the house tonight
and as I lean against the door of sleep
I begin to think about the first person to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning
as the others stood around the fire
draped in the skins of animals
talking to each other only in vowels,
for this was long before the invention of consonants.
He might have gone off by himself to sit
on a rock and look into the mist of a lake
as he tried to tell himself what had happened,
how he had gone somewhere without going,
how he had put his arms around the neck
of a beast that the others could touch
only after they had killed it with stones,
how he felt its breath on his bare neck.
Then again, the first dream could have come
to a woman, though she would behave,
I suppose, much the same way,
moving off by herself to be alone near water,
except that the curve of her young shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly alone,
and if you were there to notice this,
you might have gone down as the first person
to ever fall in love with the sadness of another.
My Personal Reaction |
My ANalysis |
Reading Billy Collins poem "The First Dream" grabbed my attention and I really enjoyed it. Collin's thought process about dreaming was honestly random to me and being random is one of my favorite qualities. Collin says in line 3 "I begin to think about the first person to dream." Out of all the things he could've been thinking about before sleeping, he chose dreaming. I tend to think randomly too and have actually thought about the first person to dream. My thoughts weren't exact to Collins but similar in ways such as being curious about how one would explain a dream to someone who has never dreamt before. I understood that in the middle of this poem Collins was trying to describe the mans dream and explain how the impossible became possibly simply by sleeping. I also really appreciated how Collins used both a mans and woman's view on how they would react to being the first to dream. I appreciated it because it made me see how two different people, even strangers, could have so much in common over one thing and react the same way over a certain situation. This certain situation being dreaming.
|
In the poem "The First Dream" Billy Collins shows that experiences that have never occurred before are a challenge to explain to others. Collins first developed this theme simply by labeling his poem "The First Dream." Readers are aware that being first means coming before anyone or anything, so if someone is first, they will know more about the situation before someone else. Coming first in something does not always necessarily make it difficult to knowledge someone about it, but Collins shows through his language that the one who first dreamt must had to have been in a strenuous situation. For example "talking to each other in vowels, for this was long before the invention of consonants." Collins uses the word "this" to actually mean the first dream to ever exist. If he states the first dream happened before people could communicate with each other and understand what they're saying, readers are convinced that explaining a dream to one another would be even harder than imaginable. Not only does Collins use just language, but also figurative language. Such as when he says "...put his arms around the neck of a beast that the others could touch only after they had killed it with stones." Collins meant in these few lines that the man dreamt a situation of approaching a live beast. The man after this dream had obvious confusion since the others could only touch it when it was dead, so how could the man possibly tell the others that he did what no one else could do. The man not being able to explain again leads back to the theme Collins created in the writing and the readers further realize how difficult it actually is to explain.
|