"Sleep" by Rachel Contreni Flynn
April 28, 2022 - Jefferson Navicky is the author of three books, and works as the archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection. For his Read & Loved selection he highlights “Sleep”, a poem from the book Ice, Mouth, Song: A Collection of Poems by Maine poet Rachel Contreni Flynn. Navicky has this to say about her work:
“I found a copy of Rachel Contreni Flynn’s Ice, Mouth, Song (winner of the 2003 Dorset Prize from Tupelo Press) in the effects of poet Lee Sharkey, whose papers I will process at the Maine Women Writers Collection at the University of New England. Sharkey died in October 2020, and her presence as a member of Maine’s literary community (and co-founder of the MWPA) is still felt. Sharkey had many, many poetry books, but this one stood out to me. There are a lot of poems in this book I admire, but the poem I keep returning to is “Sleep,” which starts “I sleep the smell of bricks and books,” and goes on to depict sleep as such an active, almost hungry, even athletic process. Sleep, in this poem, is far-reaching, creative, and intensely lyrical. “I sleep the front yard in her robe, waiting. // I sleep buckeyes and money-- / gibberish and Jesus—“ As I continue to read this poem, I get the sense that there’s not much sleep can’t do, or won’t take on and transform. And it gives me comfort and agency to think of sleep -- all manners of sleep, Lee’s and mine and all sleeps to come -- because we’re all in it together: “I sleep my fist // and raise myself, shaking.””
