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Title: Settings/Dreams: Selected Poems by Tom Fuller ISBN: 0-915685-02-7 Publisher: Devil Mountain Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1985 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $4.45

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Traveling through Dreams
Comment: There are places we visit in our lives, physically, on this planet. Different cities, different countries, each with their own essence of life. The substance that makes up these different essences are the things that make these places special and something we remember. Memories like the sun in Spain, the fog of Ireland, the children, the corner stores, are each a memory representative of a time and a place. And these are the factors that later draw our minds back to the places we've visited. We create places to return to in our minds, in our dreams. Tom Fuller gives us his memories, his experiences through his dreams, creating a poetic time-travelling device. Though most of us have not been to Spain or Ireland and cannot recall the color of the sky or light of the room he called home, we are completely immersed in what Tom found to be the most important qualities of his travels. They must be important because he is, after all, still dreaming of them.
We can immediately expect the recollections of journeys to follow a title like Settings/Dreams. And because they are not our own, might be a little discouraged. But Tom doesn't simply list off numerous accounts of his travels; he mixes them up with things he deals with everyday. In the title poem, Settings/Dreams, he dreams of a woman and their life together, before he is awakened and finds himself, alone, in different cities all over the world.

I stood against a stucco wall
And watched the party dance

Thanksgiving plates in everybody's hand
...
But as you lifted from your seat
I knew I would again awaken
And as your orange dress was gathered
In your hands- you melted
And I was sitting in a Roman square.

"Settings/Dreams" (3)

He uses reoccurring dreams as metaphors for home, and exotic lands as his loneliness. There reads a definite longing in his poems involving foreign lands and people. It's almost as if he wishes he was homeward bound, but enjoys the experience of living alone in a land different from that which he has grown accustomed to. And it's not only places through which he travels and dreams of, but time also.
It's hard to tell sometimes whether Tom is unhappy with the state of the world, or completely infatuated with it. He is never happy with the present it seems so he takes his readers with him on these journeys. Going back through childhood baseball games, visits to museums, old neighborhoods, his writing becomes so descriptive they become your memories. Or were they always your memories?

Fire on the mountain
Medfly down south
Hear the helicopters roar again
So far from Southeast Asia
Dusting the Marriott's Great America
Moving north
God, where's a box score I can hide in

"Baseball" (6)

It's not only Tom's brilliant descriptions of his surroundings, his settings, but also his feelings that make his readers fall for his poetic time-travelling. He is very good at making the qualities of his dream states a reality that we, the readers, can explore. For instance, I read most of his selected works while riding the bus around town. And each time I finished a poem I realized that I had been caught in a daydream. I was pulled out of the reality of the strangers on the bus, the smells of human waste, the fact that I am probably running late, and put into a much more satisfying, sweeter, dream world. Perhaps I was counting stars on a summer night, or perhaps I was a girl again, visiting my grandfather who has since passed away.
It's not only about transcending the space around you, but it explores different worlds in and of itself. I really appreciate that someone pays attention to the part of life that happens in between one's dream state and waking life. That someone is so creative and concrete in their presentation of their feelings and where they've come from is inspiring and encouraging for modern poets and readers of modern poetry.