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 add up enormously and are much clearer [than the poems in "77 Dream Songs"]." Other contemporaries of Berryman's, including Elizabeth Bishop and Conrad Aiken also were very impressed and wrote Berryman letters of congratulations on his achievement in the volume. Upon its publication, the book also received a positive review in "The New York Times Book Review" by the literary scholar Helen Vendler. The editors of "The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry" note that, in this volume, "[Berryman] described personal calamities and the deaths of friends such as the poets Frost, Winters, MacNeice, Jarrell, Roethke, Plath, Williams, and especially Schwartz."