{"id":13465,"date":"2026-10-14T14:05:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T14:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=13465"},"modified":"2026-10-20T01:07:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T01:07:49","slug":"when-i-waked-i-cried-to-dream-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/14\/when-i-waked-i-cried-to-dream-again\/","title":{"rendered":"When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Living Stories<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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A. Van Jordan brings together past stories into the living present when he brings Shakespeare\u2019s characters into conversation with us.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Veronica Toth<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The ancient Jewish tradition of midrash, in which rabbis tell stories to fill gaps in the scriptural narrative, has long fascinated me. Rather than being viewed as heretical and extra-scriptural, midrash lives side by side with the sacred text it expands and riffs off of, an act of engaging with old stories in fresh ways. Midrash lives on in the practice of contemporary writers\u2014Jewish and otherwise\u2014who use similar storytelling techniques to approach scripture from an infinite array of angles, often exploring the perspectives of characters that do not play a main role in the original text. It\u2019s the balance that midrash strikes between faithfulness and innovation, I think, that intrigues me: in telling new perspectives, new narratives, we declare our loyal\u2014though sometimes complex\u2014relationship to the original.<\/p>

In his poetry collection When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again<\/em>, A. Van Jordan is engaged in a similar project, although the canonical text he riffs off of is not scripture but Shakespeare. The collection both imagines the perspectives of Black characters in The Tempest<\/em>, Othello<\/em>, and Titus Andronicus<\/em>, and draws parallels between these experiences and life in contemporary America. The result is a wide-reaching and textured collage of Shakespearean allusion, current events, and reflection on the surprising ways that tradition and innovation collide.<\/p>

The title of Jordan\u2019s collection is taken from a quote from Caliban of The Tempest<\/em>, so the first section fittingly begins with an exploration of Caliban\u2019s character and relationship with his mother, the witch Sycorax. Slotted in between persona poems from Caliban and Sycorax\u2019s perspectives are poems about 12-year-old Tamir Rice, killed by police in Cleveland in 2014. In these persona poems, the distinctions between worlds are blurred: for instance, Sycorax, described as a single mother, worries when imagining Caliban pulled over by the police (\u201cHow Far Away is Caliban\u2019s Light?\u201d). In giving Caliban, Sycorax, and Tamir all the careful authorial attention that a protagonist would receive, Jordan centers the tender mother-son relationship, and the fear for a child\u2019s safety in a world hostile to Blackness, that link the three.<\/p>

Jordan\u2019s nimble use of form becomes more and more evident throughout the collection, another sign of his balance between tradition and innovation. He uses a grid format to explore how Prospero, Caliban, and Sycorax perceive and are perceived by the world, and definition poems to explore the multiplicity of often-racialized connotations within words like \u201cfair,\u201d \u201csuspect,\u201d and \u201cgrandfather.\u201d One of the cleverest surprises of the collection is in the fourth section, \u201cWhen I Waked,…,\u201d which involves an interview format and a healthy dash of metacognition.<\/p>

Jordan\u2019s project is capacious, so the collection is sometimes cut with explanatory prose as he introduces news stories or explains context. However, the poems are grounded by moments of lyricism that ache with both lost innocence and liberating joy, sometimes at once; for instance, Jordan writes of Tamir Rice that<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the opportunities for joy
presented themselves
in more colors than the boy
could name, so he chose Black,
enjoying them all.<\/p>

Likewise, the poem \u201cSuch Sweet Thunder\u201d employs a stunningly crafted refrain that emulates the jazz to which it refers. And Jordan is a master of voice\u2014pieces like the poem \u201cRokia\u2019s Parents\u201d and the interview \u201cWhen I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again\u201d that rely heavily on dialogue crackle with realism and humor. The tonal shift in the poem \u201cAaron the Moor\u201d from \u201cWhen we bring others into our lives, \/ we bring all their life into ours\u201d to \u201cBut what\u2019s the deal with this brother? \/ Jumping in bed with a Goth girl like that\u201d reflects Jordan\u2019s project of traversing the distance between canon and innovation, traditional and colloquial, in microcosm.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Jordan\u2019s dual citizenship in the canon and the present day creates rich, imaginative new inroads for exploring the Black experience in America.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The sweep of Jordan\u2019s scope in When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again<\/em> is impressively broad, working to connect several distant places and disparate time periods. This variety of forms and approaches lends an engaging, puzzle-like quality to the collection, upending a box of pieces onto the reader\u2019s lap and prompting them to assemble a cohesive picture of the Black experience. However, readers may find that the section \u201cSuch Sweet Thunder\u201d poses one piece too many. Here, Jordan draws from his collaboration with filmmaker Cauleen Smith about a cultural revolution in 1960s Bamako, Mali, tracing the relationship between two teenagers in Bamako who rebel against tradition by embracing Western fashion and music. The sestina-heavy set of poems about Rokia, Shango, and the tailor who clothes them in their magical new attire is gorgeous and entrancing, but the layers of explanation required to introduce their context\u2014and the distance between this context and the rest of the collection\u2014pose a distracting disconnection. In an explanatory note, Jordan acknowledges that \u201cThese poems hold some of the magic of A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em>, but they don\u2019t use the plot of the play, just the spirit(s) of it.\u201d<\/p>

The final poem in the collection, \u201cHow to Celebrate a Revolution,\u201d demonstrates the capacity of Jordan\u2019s brilliant imagination. Here, despite all odds, he brings all the collection\u2019s threads together: the liberating joy of Rokia and Shango, the loving relationship between Caliban and Sycorax, the gentle innocence of Tamir Rice, and exploration of the Black experience in the U.S. \u201cHow to Celebrate a Revolution\u201d is somewhat of a spiritual successor to Gil Scott-Heron\u2019s \u201cThe Revolution Will Not Be Televised,\u201d but with a Whitmanian scope of vision. Jordan sketches the small moments of fear and grief that he has located in Black lives and characters throughout the collection:<\/p>

My people, if you haven\u2019t figured it out yet,
I\u2019m talking about how difficult love is
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 when a country gets involved,
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 interrupting those moments when
a mother waves goodbye to her child,
who, framed in the window of a school bus,<\/p>

waves back. Mother and child both believing
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the other will be okay, but both waving gently
behind glass, fearing the other will break.<\/p>

However, Jordan does not end in grief. He calls on \u201cMy dear people, my neighbors, \/ my conveyors of hopes and workers \/ of Gordian knots and breakers of stout chains,\u201d declaring, \u201cI sow within you like a farmer \/ who plants faith in the harvest.\u201d The last stanzas of the poem propose a prophetic vision for the future in which<\/p>

you jump
on the white dance floor,<\/p>

stomping with your boots until
your neighbors come outside to see
just what the hell is going on. Well,<\/p>

infected by your groove, they unplug, they
join in; we all do, and we continue long into the night,
into the coming day, a Soul Train of revolt<\/p>

lining rural routes, and filling streets
in the cities with our dance.<\/p>

Literary critic James Perkins argues in Is Literary History Possible? <\/em>that \u201c[a] literary historian is usually a specialist in some past age. In imagination he inhabits that other time and place as well as his own\u2026 the specialist is a citizen of two ages and, thus, can bring one to bear critically on the other.\u201d In When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again<\/em>, A. Van Jordan has a foot each in contemporary America and the world of Shakespeare, and readers are the better for it. Jordan\u2019s dual citizenship in the canon and the present day creates rich, imaginative new inroads for exploring the Black experience in America.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Veronica Toth<\/strong> is a PhD candidate at Baylor University whose research focuses on uses of the biblical flood motif in nineteenth- and twentieth-century female coming-of-age novels. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have been published in journals such as Windhover<\/em>, Relief<\/em>, and The Other Journal<\/em>, and her academic work is forthcoming in Religion & Literature<\/em> and Teaching Theology and Religion<\/em>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again<\/strong> was published by W.W. Norton on January 7, 2025. You can purchase a copy from the publisher here<\/a>.<\/p>

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A. Van Jordan brings together past stories into the living present when he brings Shakespeare\u2019s characters into conversation with us. Review by Veronica 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