“Without dreams, we die quicker. No one quite knows the reason for this. We know less about what happens on our pillows at night than we know about the dark side of the moon.”
"Its cover grabbed my attention," or, "It came highly recommended," or, "Someone left it at the library and I scooped it out of the lost and found because it looked interesting."
The latter is my own situation on how I first opened and read the introductory page of Suzanne Muffam's A Pillow Book. A short and sweet list-driven book of poetry and quick tales is, at its root, about pillows and insomnia. Observations made when eyes refuse to close.
It's a fast read, with each entry lasting less than a page. That being said, it's not flash fiction, and it's not a book of poetry. Instead, it's a freeform self-help journal to battle the Witching Hour. The whole reading is enhanced by the fact that the existing content takes place within the Windy City, oftentimes on UChicago's campus, the location where I read most of this book. It's one to read when you're the only person besides the moon still glowing awake. Read a passage or ten and hope to eventually discover slumber.
“The miscellaneous memoranda, minutiae, dreamscapes, and lists that comprise this book-length poem disclose a prismatic meditation on the price of privilege; the petty grievances of marriage, motherhood, art, and office politics; the indignities of age; and the putative properties of dreams, among other themes, set in the dead of winter in a Midwestern townhouse on the eve of the end of geohistory.”
