An Explanation of the Dolby System

What it does, we have done for years in our own ears and heads, encoding and decoding, undoing performances, restoring them to their notes from which we perform, on which we work our own will, attending as we please, or ignoring whatever we will, whatever is displeasing, surface noises, for instance, the hiss we’d hiss if we supposed these mere machines could hear or react to our reactions. They boost here and then diminish there, to return to a state better than real, if not truer than true. What possibilities are there for engineers to tantalize us with, what high-tech tricks? Dolby meals? Dolby sex? What Dolby days and nights can we spend, lolling on some Dolby beach? Thus, must the dead dream their lives’ perfections, parodies, and yearn, in a heaven where the slag-heaps are pure gold, for incidental grit, for imperfections. From “Equinox and Other Poems” (Louisiana State University Press: $13.95, cloth; $6.95, paper; 50 pp.). Slavitt, a resident of Philadelphia, is the author of nearly three dozen books, including “The Walls of Thebes,” poems, and “The Hussar,” a novel, both published by LSU Press. 1988 David R. Slavitt. Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press.