In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive

by Clementine von Radics

A lyrical poet, Clementine von Radics presents In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive,  a collection of brutally honest poetry that lends itself to the powerful anthem of survival.

This collection bravely explores life at its darkest and most inspiring moments—drawing on central themes of love, loss, mental health, and abuse. An attempt to understand and to be understood, In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive is an ode to vulnerability that delivers concentrated, thought-provoking, and earnest verse.

Genres: Poetry, Mental Health, Feminism, LGBT, Nonfiction, Queer, Ebooks

83 pages, Paperback

First published April 9, 2019

About the author

Clementine von Radics is the author of "Mouthful of Forevers" and the founder of Where Are You Press. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

For questions or booking, email her at
clementinevonradics@gmail.com


Tumblr: http://clementinevonradics.tumblr.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clementine.v...

Reviews

[Emily B · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a copy of ‘In a dream you saw a way to survive’ through Netgalley.

Firstly the cover to this poetry collection is beautiful and enough to entice anyone. I also liked the layout of the book itself.

As a collections of poems I felt they were very good. They were raw, highly emotional and real. I also appreciated that they covered a range of topics including mania, love, infidelity and alcoholism.

As a young woman I felt I could identify with many of the poems.

[Reading_ Tamishly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went crazy over the book cover. It's so damn appealing!

I find the poetry quite personal and raw.

It speaks about hurt, grief, memories and about being a survivor.

I like how loud the messages are. It's almost like I am speaking these words to me to become stronger and learn things from all the good and the bad rather than keep being hurt.

Love the collection.

It's too short though.

[Julia Sapphire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing me with a copy, in exchange for an honest review

I quite enjoyed this collection, its probably around more of a 3.5 star rating for me. Trigger warnings for divorce, abortion, mental illness, etc.

There were quite a few poems in here that I adored! I think the author has a really powerful voice and I would love to read more from her.

Some of the poems were just okay but I could totally feel the messages behind her poems. I can feel the emotion that the author put into this collection.

Not the best collection out there or anything, but enjoyable and some of the poems are worth the read.

[Aycan · Rating 1 out of 5]

kitapta by the time-you gave me-a diamond necklace,-I loved it more- than my own throat. diye bir dize var. satırların aptallığına bak. bir de 17 dolar etiketle satacaklar 1oo sayfa bile olmayan çöp cümleler topluluğunu. düşünceleri de çok dağınıktı. hiçbir gereği yok kitabın. amerikanın oyunları işte.

[Daisy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not normally a fan of the raw confessional poem, finding them more mannered than truthful but this blew me away. Nothing is shied away from: affairs, abortion, bi-polar, suicide, love all written about in poems that get to the truth and nail the cause of the pain despite their brevity. For me the following line from her poem 'O, Love' captures exactly what I was feeling during a particular period of my life,
"Just like that you paint this girl
into all our memories."
Simple words but the meaning so resonant.
Other stand out poems for me were, 'Storm", 'Carrie a Nation' and 'Angie'.
Its not all doom and gloom though (the title sounds like Von Radics knows she has to give her readers a bit of respite), 'This is Just a Love Poem', is a sweet little reminder of how we think of the object of our desire when we first fall in love,
"The way he moves his hands
is my favourite way
that anyone,
in the history of the world
has ever moved their hands."

[Olivia (Stories For Coffee)]

Not my favorite poetry collection. I couldn’t really connect to the subject matter and the writing style itself, but I’m sure others will adore this collection.

[The Book Slayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clementine von Radics is my favourite contemporary poet of many years. I've been waiting for this one for a while now.

I own all of their books, "Dream Girl" being my favourite. I think I was looking for "In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive" to make me feel like "Dream Girl" did. And why wouldn't it! The title is a damn Holzer truism for crying out loud. The cover is gorgeous.

That being said, there weren't really any poems in this that connected with me the same way as before. (Then again, sometimes it felt like "Dream Girl" was written for me alone. Just the poem about my decade long obsession, Courtney Love, hit home hard considering I read it in a room that used to be covered in her posters.) The poems felt more general than previously, and I found myself tiring from her heartbreak poems before I even really read them. With Clementine, I crave specificity.

The only poem I really liked was the one about the abortion clinic. Still, Clementine's voice is clear and soothing to me. I'm sure I'll end up buying whatever they publish for a very long time.

[Hannah Showalter · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is the first full clementine von radics collection i've read, after years of reading their work here and there on the internet! i loved these poems and i saw myself in a lot of them! their style of writing is one i really connect with, love the specificity in a lot of these lines!

[Bana · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘This grief opens my mouth and speaks your name.’

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book sort of on the recommendation of Elizabeth Berg who had mentioned one of von Radics' other books on her Facebook page. Elizabeth Berg has started a poetry-only book club, where attendees each read the poem they especially liked from the chosen book of poems. Now I want to start a poetry book club.

[madi leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boy, do I have some Big Feelings about von Radic’s latest work In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive and smacking three GR stars on this collection is a bad way of conveying how I feel about it. So, no quick synopsis here— sorry.

In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive is a two-part collection that synthesizes some tough material into a well-curated examination of survival, trauma, heartbreak, grief, and hope. Von Radic runs the gamut of common themes explored in contemporary poetry so when I began reading the collection, I worried that they wouldn’t have anything new to say. Ultimately, Part I did not distinguish itself to me. Part II, on the other hand, PART II.
Von Radic’s voice is smart, toothy, and dripping something delicious in Part II, but the prosody of the poems in Part I never hit the same lyrical stride as later ones. In particular, I’m still thinking about “The poet refuses to see what can be plainly seen” hours after I finished the full collection.

In this ancient and blooming place, longing did not exist
until Zeus grew jealous, splitting each person in half with a
blade of lightning, and that was the birth of loneliness and
fucking and longing and birth.
This is how we learned to search for each other, to clatter our bodies back into a single thing.

Von Radic’s imagery and thoughts are so potent and fresh. They upset the inertia that I feel around contemporary poetry. Only a few poems in Part I hit me in the same way such as “A conversation between my therapist and the mouth that sometimes belongs to me”.

But what do you call the
children? Is this the way a
wolf becomes a dog? Listen.
There was once a terrible
snow and I ate despite,
I made soup from my own
bones.

Von Radic is a force and I look forward to what they write next. In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive, without a doubt, is something I would encourage you to read. I received an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review, but the collection will be released soon on 04/09/2019.

[Alex (novelswithalex) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful and haunting poetry collection that touches on divorce, abortion, sexuality, and mental health. I love poetry collections that feel like a timeline of someone’s life, and this felt exactly like that. It felt like the poet was recalling this timeline, going back and forth every once in a while but staying on topic and creating something linear. There were some lines that felt a little stunted or clunky, but overall it was a style I really love. I enjoy poems that don’t rhyme and that sound more like prose. It also felt like a good balance between short and long poems. Overall, this is a poetry collection that I could see myself rereading every once in a while or coming back to special poems.

*I received this ARC through NetGalley*

[Dora (Swift Coffee Book Blog) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful collection of poems inside a stunning cover!
I couldn't say that I could relate to all of the poems, but there were many that touched me deeply, and I could feel with the poet - and that's in itself a huge thing. Most of the poems were strong ones that dealt with deep feelings and serious life situations, like cheating, love, abortion, and most of all, mental illness. They showed what it's like to wake up every day with a struggle within yourself... how it feels when your own body and brain do everything to work against you. And still it is possible to exist, to live - to survive. To have good things in your life, too.
This book of poetry is an honest and authentic lesson on fighting one's self - to live.

[Becs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whilst I didn't love this poetry anthology in the way I would have hoped to, I found it to be really versatile and exceptionally sensitive to detail. In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive is, conceptually, an exploration of a series of ideas surrounding love in its various stages, some uglier than others.

It begins with a dream, and really it ends with one, and the story-like approach to the poetry really worked for me. It remains to be a modern approach to poetry, but it feels traditional and delicate despite addressing much more timely ideas than a number of anthologies dare to. Clementine von Radics' perception of termination particularly interested me, and I thought her view was especially well presented; it's also something I'm not sure I've ever seen done with poetry and seems to be a powerful platform to do so actually.

A number of the poems are lyrical without being purple and empowering without making me inwardly cringe. In retrospect, it did feel something like a daydream in its pretty pose and whimsical delivery. However, the real selling point for me was that most, if not all, of the poems felt as though it could be relevant to a number of scenarios. Quite often I feel as though poetry demands a lot of me. It tells me how to feel, forces me into experiencing situations I don't want to relive or haven't experienced and wouldn't want to, to satisfy the catharsis the author hopes to share with me. This didn't feel like that. This anthology felt versatile enough to allow me to put whatever spin I wanted to on the meaning behind some of the poems, to feel however I wanted to about them and to extrapolate ideas to my own situations, or not, if that's what felt right in the moment.

In this way, Clementine von Radics enabled me to relive memories alongside her poems, and that is something unique and undiscovered for me. I don't think there were more than two or three poems which I would consider really memorable for what they were, but almost all of them allowed me to tread back along a forgotten path and that was really nice.

[Dr. des. Siobhán · Rating 3 out of 5]

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free poetry collection!*

I quite liked most of the poems in this collections. They deal with mental health, love, loss, social interactions, relationships and family. They are well written, the layout is interesting and the honesty in which issues are presented is raw yet rewarding: you can survive, life can be good.

One of the best parts was this 'poem' about abortion:

"To the protester outside of the clinic who called me a murderer
If I could have have kept her, if she'd have been born a girl, I would have called her Jane. As in Austen. As in my sister's middle name and my grandmother's before her. I would have taught her to be kind. To be good. To love the Beach Boys even and especially after Brian got weird. I know you don't want to hear this. Prefer to think me faceless and bloodstained, another statistic on cruel, thoughtless women. But like everyone else, this was never going to be my choice until it had to be."

4 Stars

[Caitlin Conlon]

100% my favorite collection I’ve read from Clementine. this is relatable & heartbreaking & just so gut-wrenchingly real. the way jenny holzer’s truism works throughout the entire book is fabulous as well. I feel like I need a good cry & to forgive myself for the way I handled my last breakup now, lol.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

** I received an ARC of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. **

** 3.5 / 4 stars **

Still deciding on this one!

[kada elliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In the dream, I saw a way to survive and I did.
This is how I remember it. I lost a whole river.
I stayed standing."

finished this with tears in my eyes. it was beautiful. came at a time when i needed a reminder of why i love poetry so much, and why all my pain/memory/grief/rage/womanhood/writing/love is not experienced alone or in vain.

[Steph ✨]

I was definitely too judgmental of this collection when I first read it. My standards for poetry are very high, and there are some dud poems in here, but this work is far better than I gave it credit for when I first read it.
re-shelved as poetry-good

first read in 2019
Some good and some not so good. Will revisit.
shelved as poetry-fine

[Princess Consuela Bananahammock · Rating 1 out of 5]

The best part about this was the quote by someone else in the beginning.

[Mirjam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jenny Holzer deserves better than this.

[diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

You spend years building a home
just to watch it destroyed in seconds.
[...]
Please, one last lie,
I mean gift, I mean
reason enough, please,
convince me
to forgive you.
(storm)

The question was in my mouth too,
love,
I just kept it there.
(you apologize for your mistake)

Leave her bed
cold. Come home to me
I will become the kind of woman
who can forgive you.
[...]
There is a better version of this story
where we both leave him.
Instead of loving him so much it felt like church.
Building a cathedral inside his crooked mouth.
Tossing our crooked prayers inside.
We are so alike, she and I.
(for the last five night i've had dreams about the woman he left me for)

Because every time someone offers me
their body, I convince myself to call it home.
Because enough people hurt me
And I convinced myself
I am a person who deserved to be hurt.
Because every time you broke a window
I swept the glass.
(theories on why i'm like this)

This grief opens my mouth
and speaks your name.
(i say your name, and the audience shift in their seats)

Everything I have ever buried
eventually started to dance.
(somewhere in oregon a scattering of men are smiling despite what they have done)

You,
standing there with a whole life’s
worth of heavy shit and no one
to help you carry it.
[...]
You know
all about my stupid heart
and the place you hold inside it.
(you are flying home today)

My healing is ugly.
My edges cracked and uninspiring.
But still, they are my edges.
Still, I am healing.
(notes on the term survivor)

And you have been
on the floor crying
for days.
And that is you
being brave.
That is you getting through it
as best you know how.
No one else can decide
What your tough looks like.
(you are on the floor crying)

Sometimes I am the girl.
Sometimes I am the dripping blood.
But most often
I am the one
offering up
some unwanted mess
of my self
and calling it a gift.
[...]
Who else is going to love me
if you decide to stop?
It is so easy to lose myself
in the mess of this.
To say I love you
and mean only I’m sorry.
(for vincent van gogh, patron saint of psychotic manic depressives)

I did not want to be a thing that wants. But I wake up grateful to
any misplaced God that brought me to you. I know now what the staggering
beast in my chest is capable of when it meets an equally strange and gentle
beast. Everything I wished for is true, and I was right to wish.
(it was a thing i knew for certain)

This is what I know of love. To forgive
each other our desires. You can build God
out of anything, if it’s the only thing before you.
(building an altar)

Memory sits
like a dead dog in the corner.
[...]
I’m still here. I know this because it hurts
and I’m so grateful. I didn’t plan to be alive
this long.
[...]
This life is such a heaven I forget to notice.
If I could tell my younger self anything
about this life: we do so much more
than just survive it.
(the last poem)

[Sage · Rating 4 out of 5]

“From me there flowed a whole river,
and the ground itself took a breath.”

I have been a fan of Clementine Von Radics’ since A Mouthful of Forevers where I fell in love with the poem For Teenage Girls with Wild Ambitions and Trembling Hearts. Much like A Mouthful of Forevers, there is a story arc to the order of the poems—one of heartbreak and pain and suffering in the beginning that then shifts to the whole process of healing. All of it is raw, razor sharp, vulnerable, and honey sweet in just the right places. The poems vary between three different structures, keeping me as a reader in focus, while making use of structures that seem to be more prose-like to explore certain moments in time. These moments especially feel imbued with emotion. As a collection, In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive is viciously honest and freeing in many senses.
There are so many quotes that I put aside to reference, but there are honestly too many to count. Von Radics’ poems feel like walking through a dream, in the best way possible, and I come out hazy with a deep emotional understanding of what I have read. In the last poem, aptly titled, The Last Poem, I was left with a promise of joy. It is the perfect last poem for a collection that sees dark depths and the beginnings of tenderer love than before.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Thank you to Andrews McMeel Publishing and NetGalley for a copy this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

You spend years building a home
just to watch it destroyed in seconds.
Storm

This grief opens my mouth
and speaks your name.
I say your name, and the audience shifts in their seats

What I would give
to leave the past behind
and have it stay there.
Ever the optimist

I want you to know the
second time I went crazy
there was no one to blame
except my own soft burning
brain.
A conversation between my therapist and the mouth that sometimes belongs to me

As if a thing that does not kill you
makes you more than a person
who is not killed.
Notes on the term survivor

And you have been
on the floor crying
for days.
And that is you
being brave.
That is you getting through it
as best you know how.
You are on the floor crying

You can’t declare war on grief. You can’t declare war on loss
Carrie a nation

Still, I’ve lived
inside my own heart for a long time now.
Split

Sometimes I am the girl.
Sometimes I am the dripping blood.
But most often
I am the one
offering up
some unwanted mess
of my self
and calling it a gift
[...]
I have spent countless days
grieving my own brain.
For Vincent van Gogh, Patron Saint
of Psychotic Manic Depressives.

This morning I woke up so in love with you I didn’t know what to do with my body, which was far from yours.
The Poet refuses to see what can be
plainly seen.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first time reading this author and initially I was a little thrown off by what I thought was unevenness, but once I began Part II it all began to fall into place. What I’ve read some describe as “missing” felt to me instead as though the entire collection read the way a manic depressive mind functions.

I appreciated the raw, emotional, unfolding “story” of love and loss that was Part I as much as the randomness of mental illness and more of Part II. “For Vincent Van Gogh, Patron Saint of Psychotic Manic Depressives” was by far my favorite of this collection. “On the worst days as to be manic depressive is to stand on ground that can’t promise to stay beneath you" is my favorite line, for its prose as well as its honesty.

And, not that we should ever judge a book by its cover, but in this case the cover is truly stunning and the reason the book caught my eye in the first place.

Thank you to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing me an ARC of this book.

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's something about Andrew McMeel Publishing and the type of work they put out. It all has this poetry, but not poetry vibe. It's all very instagrammy. Sometimes I wonder if the poetry I write would fit into this category, but then -- why am I writing this on this this woman's review.

Okay, soooo - I liked some of the poetry here, but a lot of it felt super contrived. I felt like there was more that she wanted to say on every page and it just felt obvious. Like some editor cut some of the shit down for "artistic value" but stripped away most of the overt rage. I wanted her to call the chick who stole her man a motherfucker. LOL! Anyway, the best pieces were: For the last five nights I've had dreams about the woman he left me for, Carrie A Nation, You are On the Floor Crying - which was like the truest, simplest, most powerful fucking poem - and my final favourite: To the protestor outside of the clinic who called me a murderer.

The rest of the poetry felt kind of like the plastic bag floating in the wind scene in American Beauty - take that as you will.

[Justine from Novels and Panda · Rating 4 out of 5]

To date, this is my second Clementine von Radics book! I fell in love with her earlier work, Mouthful Forevers. And so with latest one!

Author’s voice from then and now, of course, had changed immensely! It was divided into two parts, when I began reading I had a hard time hitting the right tones of the voice. As to the experiences were not of mine personally nor I could connect with yet. It took me time to fully hit and felt emotions as to where and where it is all coming from; that was what I thought with the first part. As for the latter part, I liked it better! I felt the lyrical change and flow of the verses. Plus the good balance between the longer pieces and the short ones is something to note of. It does not come as overwhelming nor underwhelming to one.

However, among the pieces from part one, A Bird Flew is my favorite. It took my tears.

It had impacted me more, the picture it paints the reader is louder and clearer by the page I held on. What I love most about the collection is the bravery it shows me; topics of abortion, sexuality, and talking about one’s mental health must have been therapeutic and difficult for the author and for me as it is, and with the stigma it surrounds, especially from where I am from is such a hard and taboo topic to be talking about with the wrong person. It has helped me in such a way to connect (not outright but in ways).

I would be keeping my eye out for another Clementine Von Radics work for sure!

Trigger Warning/Content: abortion, mental health, divorce.

More In A Dream You Saw a Way to Survive • Instagram • Twitter

[ania · Rating 4 out of 5]

cleaner than “mouthful of forevers” though the rough edges of that collection made it all the more charming. here, still, the shameful road around forgiveness to perhaps an inability to forgive and love or a certain kind of force being there, and exiting on the other side of a clean wound a bullet. and to speak of it and “to say it wasn’t all bad is the truth / and a disservice to the truth”.

and perhaps my favourite quote,

“i will not mention the last time i saw you. / my mouth so far from yours, i said / i am afraid i will spend entire years / trying not to need you. / as if it wasn’t certain. / as if it wasn’t my confession.”

or the one that splits me open every time i see it,

“i am afraid / will love you forever / and we will never be / in the same room / again.”

how a clean wound is still a wound.

[Ethan Woods]

All 3 of Clementines books have been home runs for me. And Dream Girl is probably still my favorite, but damn this was great. This book is bursting at the seams with desperation and vulnerability. She acknowledges internal, personal flaws, the hurt and desperation in them, but keeps on swinging with damn near startling ferocity. All of these poems feel very internal and revealing. And most of them express hurt in some way. But I rarely felt anything less than inspired by them. Loved it

“And wasn’t this always
my worst fear?
My love in glittering pieces all over the floor.
My trust just another mess that ruins the carpet.
Your girl,
a madness haunting my home.”

[Rita Sousa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful poetry collection. While I couldn't connect with some of the poems - mostly the ones about divorce and loss - I could appreciate the writing. Clementine writes in a very lyrical way, about loss and grief and love and mental health.

I could see myself re-reading this, even if I don't see myself in many of the poems, which tells you how much I liked it.

*ARC provided by Netgalley*

My second complete read for the O.W.L.S. Magical Readathon - Herbology - a book with a plant on the cover ✓