"Intuition is the very force or activity of the soul in its experience through whatever has been the experience of the soul itself." -- Henry Reed
Henry Reed (22 February 1914 - 8 December 1986) was a British poet, translator, radio dramatist and journalist.
He was born in Birmingham and educated at King Edward VI School, Aston, followed by the University of Birmingham. At university he associated with W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice and Walter Allen. He went on to study for an MA and then worked as a teacher and journalist. He was called up to the Army in 1941, spending most of the war as a Japanese translator.
After the war he worked for the BBC as a radio broadcaster and playwright, where his most memorable set of productions was the Hilda Tablet series in the 1950s. The series started with A Very Great Man Indeed, which purported to be a documentary about the research for a biography of a dead poet and novelist called Richard Shewin. This drew in part on Reed's own experience of researching a biography of the novelist Thomas Hardy. However, the 'twelve-tone composeress' Hilda Tablet, a friend of the late Richard Shewin, became the most interesting character in the play; and in the next play, she persuades the biographer to change the subject of the biography to her - telling him "not more than twelve volumes". Dame Hilda, as she later became, was based partly on Ethel Smyth and partly on Elisabeth Lutyens (who was not pleased, and considered legal action).
Reed's most famous poem is Lessons of the War, a witty parody of British army basic training during World War II, which suffered from a lack of equipment at that time. Originally published in New Statesman and Nation (August 1942), the series was later published in A Map of Verona in 1946, and was his only collection to be published within his lifetime. Another anthologised poem is Chard Whitlow, a clever satire of T. S. Eliot's Burnt Norton. Eliot himself was amused by Chard Whitlow's mournful imitations of himself ("As we get older we do not get any younger ...").
Unfortunately for Reed he was forever being confused with the much better known Sir Herbert Read; the two men were unrelated. Reed responded to this confusion by naming his alter ego biographer in the Hilda Tablet plays "Herbert Reeve" and then by having everyone else get the name slightly wrong.
The Papers of Henry Reed are kept safe at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.
"All human beings are interconnected, one with all other elements in creation.""As we abide in sleep, intuitively resonating with the sum of all our experiences - this life and beyond - we gain refreshing perspective on our efforts and have an opportunity to remember what we know.""Because there is a larger awareness that transcends time and space, an awareness is available after death.""Dream study impacts culture. We are put in touch with the inner poet who dreams. We hear our inner, subjective response to the outer world. That helps spiritualize our lives.""Dreams have always expanded our understanding of reality by challenging our boundaries of the real, of the possible.""Dreams seem to have a will of their own.""Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. It introduced the notion that there existed certain predictable and identifiable processes by which dreams were formed.""How do you know, right now, that you are aware of being aware, or conscious?""Hugh Lynn Cayce, Edgar Cayce's son, is quoted as saying, The best interpretation of a dream is one you apply.""I published in 1978 a report on dreams in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. It was the first study of its kind to demonstrate that it is possible for people to make constructive use of their dreams to improve their lives.""If there is any one truth from the legacy of the Cayce readings, it would be that there is a spiritual dimension to humans, something beyond time and space.""If there is any truth to my parenting the dreamwork movement, it comes from the power of the press.""It is easier to learn to interpret dreams if you have a reason to use them for something constructive. You apply your dream insights to making constructive changes in your life.""It makes a difference what we choose to experience during sleep. Many of us think of sleep as a chance to get away from it all. But sleep is also a chance to return to the joys of our spiritual heritage - our universal awareness.""It was Jung who first said to explain the symbol as if talking to a man from mars who knew nothing about our life on earth.""People are learning to feel more comfortable hearing one another's dreams. It used to be that if you told a dream in public, someone had to make a joke to relieve the tension introduced by that alternative reality.""People don't think their dreams amount to much, but when I ask them to examine them for common themes, they surprise themselves at how accurate they are! They see that their dreams have value.""The sixth sense is at the core of our experiences. It is what makes experiences out of events.""The things that concern us during the day are going to influence what we experience during the night.""The usual comment from psychologists and psychiatrists was that it's best not to encourage people to look at their dreams because they are liable to stir up problems for themselves.""There is both a skill factor and an effort factor in dream recall. People can develop dream recall skills, such as lying still in the morning and writing down whatever comes to mind.""There is something very basic to the sense of listening. The sense of hearing is the only one that operates totally from vibrations, without other physical or chemical reactions to receive the sensations.""We each have a sixth sense that is attuned to the oneness dimension in life, providing a means for us to guide our lives in accord with our ideas.""What is it like to fall asleep? What happens? Where do we go? Why don't we remember? Since childhood most of us have wondered about the mystery of sleep.""What we hear while we are asleep continues to resonate with us upon awakening.""When we awaken, we cannot account for the time spent. We simply don't remember. About the only evidence we have of experiences while we were asleep is when we happen to remember a dream.""When we fall asleep, we withdraw our awareness from its hypnotic fascination with physical sensation, thereby enabling us to listen with our now awakening sixth sense."