The Theme of Sleep in The Mixtape of Taliesin
We might consider sleep an initiating theme in The Mixtape of Taliesin — the first poem of the first Suit (THE DECK OF TALIESIN: The Suit of Spades) starts with an author at their table, sitting by a window, and as their pen rolls off the table they lay their head down to rest on their forehead and thereby fall asleep.
I rest my forehead on my elbow
as gold filters thru my eyes to fall
in showers on a wilder land
It seems that the writing then happens in a dream
Ink drops from fragile tip
in random words to fill a line
who knows what names arise
on the horizon of one’s consciousness
where certainty becomes a lie
the pen then completes its rolling across the table top to fall off from it
Like a Falcon thru the sunlit sky
in other words released from the bounds of earth, of wakefulness, of limits to the imagination, the poet’s spirit flies free.
I crook my head within my arms
as visions blur their scarlet blooms
And the poet goes further into the Land of Dreams.
Remember that The Structure of The Mixtape of Taliesin is of two Suits of Cards (Spades, Clubs), the Ghosttrax (The Utah Quartets), and the final two Suits of Cards (Hearts, Diamonds), interestingly enough the first poem after the The Utah Quartets (TALIESIN ERRANT: The Suit of Hearts) is also a sleep and dreams poem, with similar referents.
It starts
Sleep is the Courting Bird
That droops its brilliant tail
Onto your cloudy brain
Then twirling thrice its regal neck
Pecks bronze & furious beak
Through your nascent thought
& settles in to guide the night.
The Deck of Taliesin was a summer poem, during the middle of the day, with falcons through a sunlit sky and goblin hedges that are green, but in this poem
…dreams arrive
In antique garb & manner
Complaining of a winter journey
In the Deck of Taliesin where the poet is falling asleep there is a pen and resting the forehead in an elbow, here where the poet is dreaming
Along his sleeve a pendragon scrawls
But in both poems the falcon appears
Above, a falcon stoops beneath a cloud
Sleep is perhaps the overarching theme of the leading suits in each section — it is returned to multiple times in the Suit of Spades and the Suit of Hearts but not as much in the Clubs and Diamonds, and also I just noticed this — there is no sleep in The Utah Quartets . Every poem in the Quartets is awake, even late at night:
Come Night -
The Tombs of Clubs
Masks of Arawn grid their front
Interior Music cuts us
Into Prismatic shards
Or
2 A.M. Shadow
tendriled on the giving grass
folded from a footfall
or sketched by slipshod crayon
There is waking in unpleasant circumstances:
In Dog-Piss Squat
A sizzle of bodies
Turns
bolts of hot light twist
thru the boarded windows
Strike
mucus-clotted eyes open
but no sleep; there are references to things that in other poems outside the Quartets would probably be connected to dreams and sleep. In the end of the last quartet sleep is close at 2. a.m in the morning:
Here in the heartbeat of night
in the moment between breaths
when your step trembles at the precipice
of your next step,
Here, on silken edges of sleep
curtailing the regions of prophecy
Dark Spirit, give the gift of your morphine vision
lift back a velvet tuck of emptiness
pull the curtain on the Window of Possibility
& let me climb thru, searching
So the ending of that poem is not with sleep, but close, and the next poem, the aforementioned Taliesin Errant is with the poet deep in dreams.
As noted the Suit of Spades has a lot of focus on Sleep and dreams
It starts with The Deck of Taliesin, wherein the Poet falls asleep — perchance to dream — and ends with The Nightmare of Taliesin in which it says
Wake me, Wake me to the Burial of our cares
For we play in the Mansion of a Moment
composing our own funeral aires.
Not sure why the archaic spelling, although there are some recurring archaic themes in the book as well.
The Suit of Hearts has, aside from Taliesin Errant, two Tarot poems with strong focus on sleep — The Moon and The Stars.
In The Moon sleep has a good deal of its traditional connection to death, it is a depressive sleep that cannot be achieved
Will I. . . . I will wake
In the silent room
Without will I will rise
Wipe the yellow grain
Out my eyes
Wistful for my severed sleep
Whereas the sleep of The Stars is a mythological rest
Gwyn Ap Nudd of Annwfn
take your rest on Ysgyryd Hill
from the exertions of your Walpurgisnacht
counterpoint to spiral mountains
breathing fine mist of Nebulae
raggedly, & your dogs
blowing out bouquets
steaming air that might ice up
into a Book of Kells Julia Set.
Gwyn Ap Nudd of Annwfn is taking a rest — reasonably close in a Welsh manner to Death taking a holiday or perhaps Death sleeping it off.
In conclusion the Suits of Spades and Hearts initiate their sections with Sleep and Dreams — in the case of Spades those dreams are nightmares which is a good lead in to the darkness, stresses, and violence of the Suit of Clubs, whereas the dreams of the Suit of Diamonds are aligned with death and:
A specific vibrant coldness
of the analytic mind
it is nonetheless a hopeful death, promising reincarnation — another of the major themes that we will address in some later article.
This was written by IG Agent 13.
The Mixtape of Taliesin is an accredited Illuminati Ganga publication.
This and other essays of criticism can be found on Luminasticity’s criticism Page https://medium.com/luminasticity/criticism/home