ABSTRACT

To have a psychoanalytic perspective is to see the way larger meaning is folded into small. Each association, each dream report, each memory, indeed each moment of expression or perception can be seen to be organically connected to a larger motivational whole. Poets too make great and exhilarating hay out of the universal connectedness of meanings—finding beauty, it might be said, where analysts look for truth, finding the wonderful in the particular, finding it, moreover, in fresh and surprising ways. Here’s a breathtaking example from the contemporary Native American novelist and poet Sherman Alexie. Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World The morning air is all awash with angels … —Richard Wilbur The eyes open to a blue telephone In the bathroom of this five-star hotel. I wonder whom I should call? A plumber, Proctologist, urologist, or priest? 2Who is most among us and most deserves The first call? I choose my father because He’s astounded by bathroom telephones. I dial home. My mother answers. “Hey, Ma,” I say, “Can I talk to Poppa?” She gasps, And then I remember that my father Has been dead for nearly a year. “Shit, Mom,” I say. “I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry— How did I forget?” “It’s okay,” she says. “I made him a cup of instant coffee This morning and left it on the table— Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years— And I didn’t realize my mistake Until this afternoon.” My mother laughs At the angels who wait for us to pause During the most ordinary of days And sing our praise to forgetfulness Before they slap our souls with their cold wings. Those angels burden and unbalance us. Those fucking angels ride us piggyback. Those angels, forever falling, snare us And haul us, prey and praying, into dust. Well, we all know what this poem is talking about: the dead don’t just go away. For years after my father died I found myself reaching for the phone to call him—at odd excited moments, like after the Giants scored a touchdown on TV. A student of Kohut’s might say this is the fate of a selfobject; it never dies.