Like the paintings on the walls of Chauvet in Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams or the enigmas of Wonderland that challenge Alice, the poems in Lin Nelson Benedek’s new collection dramatize the self’s relationship to the world through symbol. Wounded and reflective, intimate and anecdotal, Benedek’s book charts a narrative arc through the private world of the speaker: a quest to reconcile grief with the manifold quiet triumphs of an abiding life with a beloved husband and son. Even though the border between the worlds of sleeping and waking may be dark, Benedek reveals that it is also permeable and revelatory. —Anna Journey, The Atheist Wore Goat Silk

When a Peacock – the symbol of spiritual awakening – Speaks to You in a Dream, listen up! In this remarkable new collection, Jungian imagery, impossible longing and Rousseau’s lush, jungle fantasies juxtapose sharply with harsh reality; the absent father, the out of her depth mom. Their inevitable divorce, followed by the death of Benedek’s beloved mother, sends her into an orgy of despair. Interspersed with Dream Fragments that provide both mystery and deeper understanding, these poems mine the riches of Benedek’s tumultuous early years, taking the reader on an unforgettable journey through an examined life. —Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of Enter Here and Junkie Wife.

Although we may each have a desire to say this is who I am and this is what I came for, Lin Nelson Benedek has gone beyond that to harvest the raw material of her dreams and create from ether’s gift a seductive pattern, its frayed edges tamed by a gentle and generous lyric voice. —Sandra Alcosser, A Fish to Feed All Hunger and Except by Nature

Benedek’s second poetry collection is an attestation that vulnerability and the thorns of human drama can be translated into an authentic, magical and inspired language. When a Peacock Speaks to you in a Dream is amemorable selection of poems offered through the author’s anchoring and tender voice. Benedek carries the spirit and insights of Alice from Wonderland, Dorothy from Oz, Eve from The Garden, Williemarie from Nebraska, and here now, she offers us the wisdom of the speaking peacock. I think it’s good for all of us to listen.

—Sam Roxas-Chua, author of Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater and Echolalia in Script

For a beautiful moment we are possessed by “impermanence;/ freedom, longing,” all at once, in Lin Benedek’s lush new book. There’s a perfected contrast intersection between the hallucinatory topography of mythic dreams and that precise geography found in our everyday contemporary reality. These poems, these “blessings for the survivors” are what Benedek offers as songs to “extinguish flames.” Dear “Pleasure World”: whoever “dives deep to shipwreck” finds themselves face to face with a vast ocean treasure.

—Elena Karina Byrne, Squander