ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what light poems about children and parenting can shed on psychoanalytic treatment. The nonverbal aspects of poetry, such as sound and rhythm, offer us access to the nonverbal dance between caregiver and infant. The poems tell us about the mind of the poet/parent. They reveal an essential gap between the parent’s knowledge of mortality and the child’s innocence. Poems by Chana Bloch, Dawn McGuire, George Oppen, David Shaddock and William Butler Yeats reveal the existence of this gap, which in these instances is ironic but nontraumatic. However, poems by Sharon Olds and Euripides describe situations in which it is intolerable to parents and leads to abuse. A case example is offered in which the therapist’s attitude toward his patient’s parenting is crucial.
