What do you think?
On Dreams
Afflicted with sudden blind spots in her right eye, Maureen Thorson consults her doctor. Her diagnosis is AZOOR (acute zonal occult outer retinopathy), a rare condition that has no known cause and is surprisingly difficult to confirm. Because the afflicted eye appears normal, the problem cannot be directly observed-except by the patient herself.
Faced with the possibility she may lose her sight, Thorson goes looking for answers, reading and thinking her way through art history, science, poetry, folklore, myth, and film. She engages with Aristotle, who claims that menstruating women stain mirrors red simply by looking at them. She bristles equally at the romantic notion of the blind poet and the clairvoyant one. She desperately wants to assert control. "Writing can't save you from going blind," she acknowledges, but it "offers the reductive simplicity of narrative, with its seductive endings, tidy resolutions."
Maybe. When authoritative sources turn out to be mistaken, what then? When oft-quoted wisdom is revealed to be apocryphal, can it still ring true? And when her vision mysteriously clears, as unexpectedly as it dimmed, can she even claim she's been ill? Throughout the essays in On Dreams , Thorson finds herself repeatedly asking not only "what is reality?" but "whose reality?"
Faced with the possibility she may lose her sight, Thorson goes looking for answers, reading and thinking her way through art history, science, poetry, folklore, myth, and film. She engages with Aristotle, who claims that menstruating women stain mirrors red simply by looking at them. She bristles equally at the romantic notion of the blind poet and the clairvoyant one. She desperately wants to assert control. "Writing can't save you from going blind," she acknowledges, but it "offers the reductive simplicity of narrative, with its seductive endings, tidy resolutions."
Maybe. When authoritative sources turn out to be mistaken, what then? When oft-quoted wisdom is revealed to be apocryphal, can it still ring true? And when her vision mysteriously clears, as unexpectedly as it dimmed, can she even claim she's been ill? Throughout the essays in On Dreams , Thorson finds herself repeatedly asking not only "what is reality?" but "whose reality?"
- GenresPoetry
188 pages, Paperback
Published May 15, 2023
About the author
Maureen Thorson
12 books24 followersMaureen Thorson lives in Maine. Her third book of poetry, "Share the Wealth," is just out from Veliz Books. She is also the author of "My Resignation" (Shearsman 2014) and "Applies to Oranges" (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011). Visit her at maureenthorson.com
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
June 22, 2026
Reflections on personal experiences of dreams and reality upheld by quoting authors and psychologists. This narrative framework is my favorite — the individual understood through the collective and/or collective built through the individual, both at once! I do like hopeful-ish literature when it’s realistic or grounded. Aristotle is so weird (lovingly).
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review