House Dreams

By Deanna Young

House Dreams, Deanna Young's haunted and haunting third collection, is at once a core sample of the life we all live underground, and a view beneath the foundations of the various eras and places that make up one woman's life story. These poems have the plainspoken power, surreal shifting, uncanny logic and transformed everyday imagery of our most numinous dreams. It's as if Jung's assertion that "[w]hen an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate," is taken up here as a reading guide back through time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Feb 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781771313971

Deanna Young

Deanna Young’s previous books include House Dreams, nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, the Ottawa Book Award, the Archibald Lampman Award and the ReLit Award, and Drunkard’s Path. Young grew up in southwestern Ontario during the 1970s and ’80s. Reunion, her fourth collection, belongs to that place and time. She now lives in Ottawa, where she works as an editor and teaches poetry privately.

Book preview

HOUSE DREAMS

HOUSE DREAMS

DEANNA YOUNG

BRICK BOOKS

BRICK BOOKS · 431 BOLER ROAD, BOX 20081

LONDON, ONTARIO N6K 4G6 · WWW.BRICKBOOKS.CA

Cover image: elysian landscape by Drew Klassen

(drewklassen.ca), 2012, courtesy of Parts Gallery

The author photo was taken by Rémi Thériault

Print design and layout by Cheryl Dipede.

The print edition of the book is set in Whitney, designed by Tobias Frere-Jones and published by Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

copyright © Deanna Young 2014

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Young, Deanna, 1964-, author




House Dreams / Deanna Young.

Poems.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-771313-97-1

I. Title.

PS8597.O592H68 2014      C811'54     C2014-903874-7

We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

A book of dark corners and shifting locations, full of switches that light up the unobvious places, elsewhere in the house.

House Dreams, Deanna Young’s haunted and haunting third collection, is at once a core sample of the life we all live underground, and a view beneath the foundations of the various eras and places that make up one woman’s life story. These poems have the plainspoken power, surreal shifting, uncanny logic and transformed everyday imagery of our most numinous dreams. It’s as if Jung’s assertion that [w]hen an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate, is taken up here as a reading guide back through time.

for Alice, Eva, Will

This was the dream. I was in a house I did not know. . . Descending the stairs, I reached the ground floor. There everything was much older. . . Everywhere it was rather dark. . . I came upon a heavy door, and opened it. Beyond it, I discovered a stone stairway that led down into the cellar. Descending again, I found myself. . .

—Carl G. Jung

The village is not better than Pittsburgh.

Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.

—Jack Gilbert

CONTENTS

Beautiful, Astonishing, Wondrous

BARACHOIS

On the Way to the Lake

Matin gris

Vieil ami

Visions

Rêve peuplé d’animaux

Le grand ménage

Helen

Survivante

Le loyaliste

Storm Damage

Il nous reste encore du temps

THE CITY

The Linden Tree

The First Wife

These Are the Days

The Humanitarians

Still

Rescue

Rest

In Puerto Angel

The City from Above

You Cannot Go In

Dislocation

WESTMOORINGS

The Gate

Inventory: Long-Term Storage

Miss Deanna

Shot at the Heart of the Central Market, Port of Spain

Vertigo

What the Gardener Was Reading

When the Shipment Finally Arrives, in Scorching November

Safe Haven

Morning, Sunset Drive

Clothed in Darkness

When the Maple Fell

The Path

Crossing the Field

Signs

Daughter of Forgiveness

In Her Velvet Dress

The Meadow

The Inland Sea

Bonfire

It Follows You Down

The Faith of Dogs

MIDDLESEX COUNTY

How to Be Free

If a Door Opened

Knowledge from a Previous Life

Mythology

Thunder, 1980

April Snow, 1979

Sunday Best

There

Eagle Drive

Black Bug

Ash

Country Music

Parkhill Gazette,