The Dream We Carry

The Dream We Carry: Selected and Last Poems by Olav H. Hauge
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love poetry but had never heard of Olav H Hauge until about 10 years ago when I read The Dream We Carry, the poem, not the book.  I love it so much that I have written it inside my medicine cabinet in the bathroom, so every time I reach for the toothpaste or the deodorant I must first glance at his magic words. It begins "It's the dream we carry/ that something wondrous will happen/ that it must happen…" Later I learned that this poem was recited (did Hauge himself say it? I don't know.) at a Nobel Prize ceremony.

The title poem is so buoyant that I was surprised to learn that Hauge suffered mental anguish, at least in the early part of his life.  In the introduction  to this collection of Hauge's poems, Robert Bly tells us Hauge married an artist when he was 65, and it sounds as if he thrived from then on, until he died at age 86 in the same Norwegian village where he had lived all his life, farming just three acres and writing poems. His poems are brief and simple and deep.


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