The Impossible Dream (The Quest) The Impossible Dream (The Quest) "The Impossible Dream (The Quest)" is a popular song composed by Mitch Leigh, with lyrics written by Joe Darion. The song is the most popular song from the 1965 Broadway musical "Man of La Mancha" and is also featured in the 1972 film of the same name starring Peter O'Toole. The complete song is first sung by Don Quixote as he stands vigil over his armor, in response to Aldonza (Dulcinea)'s question about what he means by "following the quest". It is reprised partially three more times – the last by prisoners in a dungeon
The Dream Songs the unnamed "friend," to whom Berryman refers, speaks in a Southern, black dialect and in "blackface," as Berryman indicates, suggesting a kind of literary minstrelsy. Kevin Young, an African-American poet who edited a "Selected Poems" of Berryman for Library of America, commented on this issue: [Berryman's] use of "black dialect" is frustrating and even offensive at times, as many have noted, and deserves examination at length. Nonetheless, the poems are, in part, about an American light that is not as pure as we may wish; or whose purity may rely not just on success (the dream) but on failure (the