More Pleasant Adventures
More Pleasant Adventures - meaning Summary
Identity as Layered Dream
The poem explores how personal continuity slips amid change and confusion. Early sweetness gives way as direction is forgotten and new interests displace earlier ones. The speaker frames identity as layered and dreamlike—unchanged in place yet transformed—so loss, parting, and renewal coexist. Life's disorientation is tempered by social bonds and art's persistence; paintings and associations anchor meaning even as boundaries break and existence is repeatedly reinvented.
Read Complete AnalysesThe first year was like icing. Then the cake started to show through. Which was fine, too, except you forget the direction you’re taking. Suddenly you are interested in some new thing And can’t tell how you got here. Then there is confusion Even out of happiness, like a smoke— The words get heavy, some topple over, you break others. And outlines disappear once again. Heck, it’s anybody’s story, A sentimental journey—“gonna take a sentimental journey,” And we do, but you wake up under the table of a dream: You are that dream, and it is the seventh layer of you. We haven’t moved an inch, and everything has changed. We are somewhere near a tennis court at night. We get lost in life, but life knows where we are. We can always be found with our associates. Haven’t you always wanted to curl up like a dog and go to sleep like a dog? In the rash of partings and dyings (the new twist), There’s also room for breaking out of living. Whatever happens will be quite ingenious. No acre but will resume being disputed now, And paintings are one thing we never seem to run out of.
from A Wave (1984)
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