Dreams

Pastan uses animals to represent people’s limited access to another person’s thoughts and experiences. She states, for instance, that people only learn of a bird’s death after finding a “single feather / left behind” (Lines 10-11). Pastan does not witness the bird’s death. The feather leaves no clues about how the bird died. She links the feather back to sleep by comparing it to “a particle of sleep / caught in the eye” (Lines 12-13). When a person wakes up, they might only know they dreamed because they slept. In this example, the sleeper loses their memory about the events in their dreams.

Possessive pronouns (i.e., my, our, their) play an essential role in the poem. Pastan switches between the first person singular (I), the first-person plural (we), and the second person singular (you) throughout “Dreams.” However, she uses the article “the” rather than a possessive pronoun when referring to the eye (Line 13). As a result, “a particle of sleep / caught in the eye” makes a universal statement about sleep (Lines 12-13), suggesting that the experience is not only between Pastan and the listener. All of humanity shares it. Since people themselves cannot remember the specifics of their dreams, they cannot share them with others.

The gap between people about each other increases in the fourth and fifth stanzas. After sharing the specific details about one of her dreams, Pastan talks about “your” sleep (Line 27). She opens the fifth stanza with a “dog’s legs” moving “in his sleep” (Lines 25-26). Does the dog dream of chasing or being chased? The reader never learns. Pastan then changes the focus from the dog to “your closed eyelids” (Line 27), linking the two subjects. Like with the dog, movement— “the reel unwinds” — indicates the “you” dreams (Line 28). However, does “watcher and watched, / archer and bull’s eye” refer to the events of “your” dream or a more generalized experience of dreaming (Lines 29-30)? Pastan leaves it ambiguous.

Pastan uses the images of birds and a dog to lead into her observations about others’ dreams. She cannot observe them. She only knows that others do dream.

The animals in “Dreams” also show dreaming as a part of nature. The human experience of dreaming happens in the same continuum as the leaves and birds’ life cycles. The sea “creeps up…to claim its patrimony” makes it sound like the sea factors into everyone’s dreams (Lines 15-18). Humans are not the only species that dreams. Dogs do too.

Written in 1979, the imagery of “Dreams” fits into a mindset radical for its time. Before the 1960s, many scientists viewed humans as almost separate from nature. They believed that no other animal species used tools or other hallmarks of human intelligence. However, researchers like Jane Goodall showed animals could develop complex communication and rituals similar to humans. Pastan incorporated that cultural shift into “Dreams.” Humans are not separate from nature—nature guides and shapes human existence, just as it does for other animals’ existences.