Nothing less than essential, existential questions haunt the heart and mind of
Kelly Lydick’s ambitious first book: What is the real? How did I get here? Only
when “The entire world looks different and I will never be able to see the old
world again” can the speaker of Mastering the Dream maneuver through epistle,
poetry, Jewish thought, late-night TV, Plath, tattoo parlors and a fear of death to
begin to answer herself. Reminding us that “Information is not knowledge,” and
questioning the boundaries between everything, between fiction and nonfiction,
dream and reality, past and future, science and metaphor, she sets a third term
between each—poetry, ecstatic vision, present, theology—in order to suggest
some preliminary answers: there’s no such thing as either/or: there’s only and &
and & and. This exhilarating wisdom is demonstrated so brilliantly by the book’s
own structure that in the end, when she proclaims “i see for the first time.
everything is clear,” we not only believe her: we seem to say it too.
-Brian Teare, author of The Room Where I Was Born
Kelly Lydick’s ambitious first book: What is the real? How did I get here? Only
when “The entire world looks different and I will never be able to see the old
world again” can the speaker of Mastering the Dream maneuver through epistle,
poetry, Jewish thought, late-night TV, Plath, tattoo parlors and a fear of death to
begin to answer herself. Reminding us that “Information is not knowledge,” and
questioning the boundaries between everything, between fiction and nonfiction,
dream and reality, past and future, science and metaphor, she sets a third term
between each—poetry, ecstatic vision, present, theology—in order to suggest
some preliminary answers: there’s no such thing as either/or: there’s only and &
and & and. This exhilarating wisdom is demonstrated so brilliantly by the book’s
own structure that in the end, when she proclaims “i see for the first time.
everything is clear,” we not only believe her: we seem to say it too.
-Brian Teare, author of The Room Where I Was Born
Kelly Lydick meditates on the value of single letters while probing
deep into the meaning of memory and those passages of light and
shadow that weave consciousness. The great themes of life and
death, of loss and acceptance, are bound here in the journey of a
young woman with a growing mastery of language and the magic it
can create.
-Neeli Cherkovski, recipient, PEN Josephine Miles Award
for Excellence in Literature
deep into the meaning of memory and those passages of light and
shadow that weave consciousness. The great themes of life and
death, of loss and acceptance, are bound here in the journey of a
young woman with a growing mastery of language and the magic it
can create.
-Neeli Cherkovski, recipient, PEN Josephine Miles Award
for Excellence in Literature
Purchase a copy of
Mastering the Dream:
Small Press Distribution
Mastering the Dream:
Small Press Distribution
All text, images and audio materials Copyright © Kelly Lydick, 2007-present.
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| Mastering the Dream |
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