Listen My Friend, This Is the Dream I Dreamed Last Night

Book excerpt: Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. LGBTQIA Studies. Unlike anything we've ever seen or published; LISTEN MY FRIEND; THIS IS THE DREAM I DREAMED LAST NIGHT is a book of wonder in which poet Cody-Rose Clevidence layers the language of information with the language of the heart; constantly locating the connections between attention and perception. On each page local and global concerns combine in an effort to reveal what it's like to live right now; during a pandemic in a broken world. With its uncategorizable form; somewhere between an essay and a prose poem; Clevidence mixes anthropology; poetry; autobiography; history; psychology; and philosophy; with subject matter ranging from agriculture; gender; justice; loneliness; pollution; space; guns; moths; family; grief; longing--it's hard to name a subject relevant to our time that isn't in this book. Clevidence's deft movement between facts and feelings is immediate from the first page; with an inquisitive and searching voice stretched over one long; never-breaking block of prose; a catalogue that becomes revelatory by the end; allowing readers to imagine a new way of processing their world.