cover image A Crumpled Swan: Fifty Essays About Abigail Parry’s “In the Dream of the Cold Restaurant”

A Crumpled Swan: Fifty Essays About Abigail Parry’s “In the Dream of the Cold Restaurant”

David Collard. Sagging Meniscus, $23.99 trade paper (284p) ISBN 978-1-963846-15-7

In this probing collection, essayist Collard (Multiple Joyce) muses on the nature of poetry while dissecting Abigail Parry’s surreal poem “In the dream of the cold restaurant.” Collard’s close readings unpack the meaning of the poem’s lines and allusions, as when he suggests that Parry quotes Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams to liken the oblique truths imparted in poetry to the unconscious desires that propel dreams, and that the image of a white napkin folded into a swan kicks off a metaphorical retelling of Zeus’s rape of Leda. Using Parry’s poem as a springboard to reflect on his own life, Collard discusses how the “pervasive sense of loneliness” inside the eponymous restaurant reminded him of what it felt like isolating while sick with Covid during the pandemic’s early days, revealing how literature “can direct us to a place within ourselves.” Entries on poetry’s purpose sometimes lose sight of the ostensible focus on Parry, as when Collard asserts that poetry serves to make “sense and sound out of the chaos of our subjective experience” without explaining how “In the dream of the cold restaurant” goes about that task. Still, the meticulous exegesis illustrates how even a brief poem can contain untold layers of meaning. It’s a rousing celebration of the power of literature. Photos. (June)
close