“Dream Deferred” Deconstructed

The poem “Same In Blues” defines a dream deferred according to four criteria: it is made up of (1) traveling, (2) nothing or nothingness, (3) impotence, and (4) confusion. What’s going on with these qualities? How do they define a dream deferred and correspond with one another?

The first stanza of “Same In Blues” begins with a plea to “take it slow” which is urgently replied to, “I can’t! / I got to go!” Another speaker (as the italics indicate) chimes in and says, “There’s a certain / amount of traveling / in a dream deferred.” A dream deferred is constantly in motion, always going somewhere. Where, however, is it going? Is this unrelenting motion aimed at a final, concrete goal, or does it refer to something that’s amiss, something that’s evanescent? In other words, is the respondent’s refusal to stop tantamount to a discontent with the current state of things?

The third stanza, Lulu’s entreaty for a diamond ring from Leonard, is met with a firm response: “You won’t get a goddamn thing!” The diamond ring generally represents marriage, a lasting commitment or engagement. To defer a diamond ring could be equivalent to deferring commitment; Leonard doesn’t want to marry Lulu. This interaction leads the italicized voice to chime in, “A certain / amount of noting / in a dream deferred.” Nothingness is an interesting concept. It’s admittedly pretty difficult to pin down. Nevertheless, let’s think of it in relation to the first ingredient of a dream deferred, traveling, and ask, to follow up, What is the destination of our travels? Where do we think we are going when we travel or, in different terms, take a shot at, say, a lasting commitment like marriage? To engage the utter nihilism of the component nothingness it seems like we aren’t going anywhere (as the temporal significance of the word deferred might very well connote on its own). A dream deferred jerks you around indeterminately.

The fifth stanza conveys a half-hearted commitment: “You can have me, baby---- / but my lovin’ days is through.” Presumably, the speaker is incapable of, well, getting it up. He can offer his lover a platonic relationship, but nothing more intimate than that. So, the chorus aptly follows this interaction by denoting “A certain / amount of impotence / in a dream deferred.” Impotence. That’s an interesting aspect to tack onto a dream deferred. As of now, the dream deferred has left one futile, traveling towards nothingness. To make matters worse, there seems to be an incapability to change this condition. Impotence here could be thought of as complacency, a resigning to the fact that you’re stuck with a dream deferred.

Finally, alludes to “Three parties” on his “party line,” making it clear that the third is not his. A third party is infringing upon his party line, a boundary. There’s some act of violation occurring here. To tell you the truth, I myself was confused by this stanza, which might make the chorus’s lines a little bit fitting: “There’s liable / to be confusion / in a dream deferred.” The last two lines of the concluding stanza affirm this sentiment, adding, “There’s liable to be confusion / when a dream gets kicked around.” Confusion itself is liable to raise some questions. So, on that note, I would like to raise a few questions:

1) What do we make of this last component, confusion? Does it fit in with the first three? Does it help us come to a clearer understanding of a dream deferred?

2) What do you guys thing a dream deferred is all about? Did this poem hit the proverbial nail on the head, or is there more (or less) to it?

3) Does this poem interact with another poem in the collection? I, for one, thought of the poem “Tell Me,” in which the speaker raises a few questions asking why the dream deferred must be his specifically.

--J.C.