36 Dreams

by Terrence Arjoon

“The first book published by 1080press was Terrence Arjoon’s 36 Dreams (June 2020). On its cover, a color plate from a 15th century German manuscript sits under a translucent piece of vellum, itself printed with a 16th century woodcut by Georg Pencz. The cumulative effect is of a distant city seen through a haze, with more rudimentary structures being erected in the foreground by naked laborers.

Inside, its numbered blocks of double-spaced prose sketch a world of ritual and expectation, in which the animals of the forest are marshaled for war and espionage. There are references to “the MOUSE CITY,” but also to “BRIGHTON BEACH″ and “MARBLEHEAD.” The seasons turn rapidly, as in a succession of letters from a distant place. The narrator is variously a young boy and an old man, is either “I” or “you.” He seems to live, as many do, in simultaneous opulence and precarity. The book is dedicated, “for Juliet and the forest,” and the former appears repeatedly as a character: teasing the narrator, shuffling the coals of a fire, dancing as a vision in a candle’s flame. The whole thing reads a bit like the daybook of someone whose relatively placid life coincides with a turbulent period of history.” — Maxwell Paparella

Email 1080presspoetry@gmail.com to request a PDF.