Favorite Poems: Mostly My Nightmares Are Dullby Andrew Hudgins

Page 857 of the Norton

It is kind of a long poem, so sorry I am not typing it out. Anyway, I was drawn to this poem (in the tone section) because of its sarcasm and snarl, which I find amusing and sympathy toward the writer. The speaker talks about "autum nights" and hte death of his relatives. I think that the speaker is stuck in a suburbia, due to the fact that there are seasons and autumn, where you need a house to have leaves to rake.

This speaker also alludes to Shakespeare's "To be" speach where dreams are what occurs during death, and how they could be nightmares or good dreams. The speaker dreams of his dead relatives, therefore having a nightmare.

I expecially like the last "couplet" so to speak the concluding three lines of the poem:
"I wake, they die again, and I walk out
into a day, I'll live as carelessly
as if I'll only-fat chance- live it once"

This excerpt sums up his ideas regarding his nightmares, and how they reoccur. His tone of "fat chance" seems resentful and condesending, as if he jsut wants the nightmares to go away.