Howard F. Stein
Well, everyone, it seems we’re moving toward spring at last, because the days are getting longer here in the eastern U.S. I’m glad to be back with you after my prolonged book leave to work on a new anthology, What They Bring: The Poetry of Migration and Immigration (IPBooks, 2020), especially relevant in this case because it includes poems by the person whose photo you see above.
This is the first time I’ve ever featured a poet whose work I first encountered as non-fiction prose. The book was Developmental Time, Cultural Space (University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), and it impressed me because it reinforced and helped to develop some of the thoughts I was having as I approached the difficult task of gathering poems for the new anthology I was planning with my co-editor, Jim Haba.
Howard F. Stein is professor emeritus in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, where he taught for nearly 35 years. I learned that during that time he published 32 books, of which 10 are books or chapbooks of poetry. That was when I realized that he was not only an original theorist of psycho-geography (another term new to me), but also a poet.
Even so many years later, and inspiringly so to me, he has a new book coming out this year. Co-authored with Seth Allcorn, it is called The Psychodynamics of Toxic Organizations: Applied Poetry, Stories, and Analysis, to be published by Routledge, the well-known publisher of scholarly books and textbooks, later this year.
Two of his recent books are Light and Shadow (Doodle & Peck, 2018) and Centre and Circumference (Ori Academic Press, 2017).
For such an accomplished man, he is surprisingly humble, even to the point of crediting his two cats, Luke and Leia, whose company has helped him write his poems, three of which are below, published here for the first time. All three are interesting and reflective and should be of special interest to psychoanalysts.
— Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
Syllogism
Your intimidating words
Continue to ring in my ears
Long after you have hurled them.
They felt like a beating,
And my soul still smarts.
Just because you say
You don’t remember,
Doesn’t mean that
It did not happen.
Mindfulness
Definition of Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.
(Al-Anon)
Sleepwalk in full sunlight,
Keep the unconscious unconscious,
Repetition compulsion – Who says
It won’t work this time?
Keen awareness of
Everyone else’s flaws,
Though having none of my own
For anyone to notice.
Left turn in
No Left Turn lane
At busy intersection;
Car accident,
Accident on purpose,
Though I’d be
The last one to know.
Why do I so often
Leave home late for meetings,
Then cut corners
To try to make up time?
Practice self-reflection –
Look intensely into
The large frame
That holds no mirror;
Remember daily reading
From Zen books.
Apply wisdom to daily life.
When stressed, take
Long deep breaths,
Take time to let
Your mind wander,
To let go.
Accidentally (again) bang
My head on dryer door while
Focused on doing laundry –
Glasses essential
For my complicated eyes
Fly off my face,
Strike the floor,
Bent out of shape.
In vain I put them
Back on, hoping this time
I will still see well,
Only for my vision
To be once more
A blur, while
Intense headache
Follows immediately.
I drive carefully
To my optician
The next day,
Grateful that once again she
Straightens everything,
Restores my sight
To crisp image.
I tell myself,
Next time I do laundry,
I’ll be more mindful.
Our Lives in Silos For Michael A. Diamond and Seth Allcorn.
Silos –
A single shape
First comes to mind –
In farmland and their towns;
Tall, cylindrical elevators
That store grain;
At work, towering silos store people,
Layer upon layer,
Corporate sileage
Called employees –
Vertical and horizontal silos,
Departments, divisions, units
On stacked floors,
Or sprawled across a single floor,
Divided by walls and minds,
Partitions visible and invisible –
In the same building;
In separate buildings
Across the city,
The country, the ocean.
Silo thinking –
Where we begin and end,
What we do,
Who we are.
We defend our silos
As if our lives
Depended on them.
We are Here; You are There.
Space, skin, boundaries.
If we cannot touch their surfaces
With our fingers,
We can touch them
With our minds.
Silos enclose and comfort us;
Silos imprison us –
Straitjacket our bodies and our minds,
Reassure us with their rigidity.
The same dissonant conversation
Can be heard within and between silos everywhere;
Cries of injustice engulf the place:
Research complains,
Finance never gives us
Enough money to operate.
Finance protests,
Research, Shipping, Purchasing,
Sales whine at us
That we’re withholding From them, but are generous
With money to other divisions,
That we’re playing favorites.
Sales accuses Administration
Of getting all the perks,
While Sales only receives
Leftovers.
They favor the others;
They neglect us.
We get put in the basement;
They get the good locations
And so much else.
Corporate tribes –
Our walls nourish
And defend
Our identities,
Borders impermeable,
Ancient Us/Them at work,
Monoliths –
We are the stone.