Readers who are familiar with the Czech author Jarmila Marie Skalna’s first book written in English, Striding into the Sun, will definitely want to read her newest book, Who Needs Dreams? – another beautifully-written and wonderful, or, better, wonder-filled, collection of stories about ordinary, but fascinating, people whom Skalna has had the privilege of meeting. It all adds up to a delightful collection of stories filled with the dreams referred to in the book’s title. Who needs dreams? Why, of course, we all need dreams for what would life be without dreams if not a prison?
Skalna’s stories always surprise me by the way they reveal the dreamlike character of ordinary life. Reading her stories, one realizes that the prison of boredom that we often lock ourselves up in is a prison of our own making, one that we can escape if we only have the imagination to dream and the wisdom to listen to the dreams of others. When I finish reading a story by Skalna I always wonder about one of my next door neighbors or a stranger I pass by on the street or the clerk in some department store – what is their story? What strange dreams stir within their skulls that will remain forever hidden from daylight unless some writer like Skalna with a gift for words and the love for the ordinary gets a hold of these and magically transforms these into poetry--using poetry as a name for all creative literature.
Here are a few of the many dreamers who brighten up the pages of Skalna’s book. There is Jennifer, a young women whom Skalna befriends, who wants to learn Czech so she can flirt with Czech hockey players in their language and who waits patiently outside the hockey arena to greet a Czech player in person. There is the eighty-nine-year-old Manuel, who has exciting stories to tell about his life in Mexico where he produced films, played chess with John Wayne, and escaped from bandits who were trying to rob his car. There is Debby, who tells the story of the day she stopped liking roses and whose memory is haunted by the death of her daughter years ago who was killed by a crazy hippy. There is Anne Delaney, S.F.O., songwriter and soprano, who was inspired to compose "King of Hearts" and traveled from Menlo Park, California, on pilgrimage to Prague to pray, sing, and hear her hymn premiere in Czech for the Feast of the Infant Jesus of Prague in Our Lady Victorious Church.
In all, there are seventeen beautifully written stories, full of humor, compassion, and drama that are just waiting for the reading public to discover. “The dead trees whisper their stories to me,” says Skalna—and oh what stories.
—RICHARD HAMMERUD, Ph.D.
[Richard Hammerud has a Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Philosophical Theology from the Graduate Theological Union. He currently teaches at the College of San Mateo and at De Anza College in Northern California.]