I Dream Myself Into Being: Collected Poems

David A. Kent, editor of Christian Poetry in Canada, teaches English at
Centennial College in Scarborough.

I Dream Myself Into Being comprises the poems from two of Thompson’s
previously published volumes: At the Edge of the Chopping There Are No
Secrets and Stilt Jack. James Polk provides a valuable preface that
introduces the reader to Thompson’s tortured personality (he committed
suicide in 1976) and to his exacting poetics. The first 45 poems (from
At the Edge) are marked by an often brilliant lyricism and by intensely
seen images of nature (particularly of the rural life around the
farmhouse on the edge of New Brunswick’s Tantramar marsh, where
Thompson lived until—during his absence in 1975—all was destroyed by
fire). These poems combine moments of domestic, amorous fulfilment with
startling epiphanies of death and suffering. The influence of poet Ted
Hughes (whose roots, like Thompson’s, were in northern England) is
most evident in a series of poems about crows, although studies of other
animals and objects indirectly pay homage to Hughes.

If Thompson’s first section celebrates life and human survival within
a harsh, unrelenting nature (the closing poem, “Onion,” affirms
human communion through the natural), the second section (Stilt Jack)
sanctions disjunction in a poetic form—the Persian ghazal, consisting
of five couplets with no necessarily obvious or logical connection
between them. In these 38 ghazals (one for each year of Thompson’s
life, as Polk observes), the voice is frequently pained (in extremis)
and confessional; the allusions are bizarrely mixed (Janis Joplin,
William Blake, and the Bible, for example); and the vision is intense
and surreal. The effect, or rather the burden, is ultimately poignant:
“Friends: these words for you.” Readers unaware of Thompson’s
achievement will be grateful for this edition and the opportunity to
experience his remarkable poetry.