Abstract

"Night Animals" is part of a larger investigation into the relationship between humans and animals. Traditionally humans have distinguished themselves from other animals and from their own animality; the question of the animal, however repressed or uncanny, nonetheless encroaches upon our symbolic spheres and our very psyches. We might ask about the possibilities for human-animal interrelation, and what these possibilities indicate about the future: what promise is held there? This poem forwards the possibility of a companion animal that might be followed, or mounted and ridden--perhaps in a dream--and with which one could communicate in some fashion, perhaps even telepathically. As with all dreams, one wonders whether there is a point of no return, and what going beyond might mean