Connie Post on “In the Arc of Evening”
The hypnagogic state is the state right before sleep, where your mind is most open, most lucid. It is a state most unbound to the constraints of our earthly existence. I often see things at this time, visions in my brain, in which I am lifted from this time and place to another time and place. Sounds crazy, right? Maybe, but I feel like in this state, our minds are able to expand in remarkable ways. I have used this unique state of consciousness to gather images or thoughts that sometimes serve as kindling for good poems. ”In the Arc of Evening” was born of my hypnagogic state. I infused the elements of insomnia as part of the poem in order to describe how these images can also be disturbing and wake me from sleep. But eventually, we all must fall asleep and face what is waiting for us. As I struggled to rest, I started to wonder how did people get to sleep centuries or thousands of years ago? Was there a sleep shaman who helped them? Were there teas and elixirs? Did they hear the animals outside rustling around? Did they travel forward in time to find me in a bed in a room and whisper their secrets in my ear? These are all questions that preceded my writing this poem.
I believe that as poets, we must expand our minds beyond what we see and hear in this world and imagine ourselves as another part of history. How would we love? How would we survive? Would I die in battle or alone in the woods? During these late nights, my imagination gets a good work out. I think we need to exercise our creative minds in ways that expand the right brain. I have a fair amount of existential angst, and sometimes, it makes sense to use that to build a poem. I spend time wondering about how whole societies have collapsed and when ours might collapse (especially now in light of the pandemic and the particular fears we are living with). At times, I can go too far with my imagination and the poem does not work or does not appeal to the reader in the manner in which I intended. But that’s okay because I think we should consistently be in the discipline of challenging our brains to think in different ways.
Late at night, when everyone in the house is asleep but me, my mind travels to these long-ago places. One night I dreamed I was a bird flying over Stonehenge. It felt so real. This is the place where poems can begin.