That’s more than I’ve ever been offered for my poetry (or most of my books!). Naturally, my response was to jump up and down with my wife & do a happy dance :D
Let me start at the beginning...
One morning, I received a short, polite note from publishing giant, Pearson, asking for permission to use my poetry in an educational setting (they publish college textbooks, etc...)
Hello, Mr. Lababidi,
Pearson and the Texas Education Agency would like to use your poem "What Do Animals Dream?" in an English language arts assessment for students in Texas.
Normally, I’d just say Yes & not ask for any money.
But, times are hard (& they’ve not gotten any easier with Covid19). With 9 books to my name I thought it's time to overcome my shyness & ask how much they were offering me.
Shortly afterward, I received the permission request—-for $2000, a license of 5 years to print 400,000 copies of my poem!
So, here's how it all began. I was approached by a gentleman who let me know that they were reading my poem. He mentioned that he works for an educational publisher, and was submitting my poem to be considered for use in an upcoming project.
You may be hearing from the permissions department in the near future if things go as I hope, he told me few weeks ago.
When I reached out, after the good news, to thank him for this great stroke of luck, he gave me this peek behind the scenes.
We took your poem to the committee of Texas teachers and I was worried they might find it too dark or disturbing, but they were very enthusiastic about it.
Here's my lucky poem, below:
What do animals dream?
Do they dream of past lives and unlived dreams
unspeakably human or unimaginably bestial?
Do they struggle to catch in their slumber
what is too slippery for the fingers of day?
Are there subtle nocturnal intimations
to illuminate their undreaming hours?
Are they haunted by specters of regret
do they visit their dead in drowsy gratitude?
Or are they revisited by their crimes
transcribed in tantalizing hieroglyphs?
Do they retrace the outline of their wounds
or dream of transformation, instead?
Do they tug at obstinate knots
unassimilable longings and thwarted strivings?
Are there agitations, upheavals or mutinies
against their perceived selves or fate?
Are they free of strengths and weaknesses peculiar
to horse, deer, bird, goat, snake, lamb or lion?
Are they ever neither animal nor human
but creature and Being?
Do they have holy moments of understanding
deep in the seat of their entity?
Do they experience their existence more fully
relieved of the burden of wakefulness?
Do they suspect, with poets, that all we see or seem
is but a dream within a dream?
Or is it merely a small dying
a little taste of nothingness that gathers in their mouths?
© Yahia Lababidi, author of Learning to Pray