Good morning, everyone. Here in the U.S., it’s Labor Day weekend – traditionally a time of rest and celebration with friends and family. With the world and weather as they are at present, however, the best we may be able to do is to get together for comfort and hope.
Instead of a new poet today, I want to share something that those of you who are both poets and psychoanalysts may recall – my response to Caston’s famous article, “Poetic Closure.”
Both articles appeared in APA, longer ago than I thought. My response was in 2007. Back then, although I had already published much prose, I had only two published collections of poetry. Since that time, however, I have continued as a “working poet” – to the extent that the list has grown to five, plus an anthology, Climate of Opinion: Sigmund Freud in Poetry (IPBooks, 2017). If you take a look at some of the humorous poems in that one, you’ll be reminded that none of us can take ourselves too seriously.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
A Working Poet Comments on Caston’s “Poetic Closure, Psychoanalytic Termination, and Death” by Irene Willis(2007). Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 55(1):43-45.
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
—Paul Valéry
Why is a poem abandoned? Not because to end it would feel like death, but because there is no such thing as real closure in poetry. We may declare a Continue reading Poetry Monday: September 2, 2019
