DREAMSONGS and other songs: {Poems for a Wider Audience}

Dreamsongs borrows no more from J. Berryman than an excellent title, for the gist of the introductory poems is likely (luckily) indeterminate, alternating in fierce dialectic between (and among) the wildest scatology and the most sensitive and lyrical paean to human nostalgia and regret.The poet in this first section flexes imagination in service of the widest range of public (and private) experience, from terza rima to heroic couplets to "free verse."The second and concluding section is perhaps Swartz's first poetic respite from the difficult intensity of his major work. Whereas the opening poems leap from the page, the concluding and far "freer" verse is, by contrast, safely within the parameters of solace and entertainment. Here the poet is, as his dedication reveals, plainly having a good time of it.We have here wit; we have compassion. "Dreamsongs" is a matrix of consummate humanity, employing the full range of carnality and spirit. It is a treacherous but often jolly undertaking, a joust with an overwhelming despair, at the one extreme, and the very human and characteristic absurdities of daily existence, at the other.