SATURDAY, February 9, 2013, 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
A special presentation in honor of the Chinese New Year:
Paula Varsano, Associate Professor in the Chinese Program at U.C. Berkeley, will speak on “Translating the Ineffable: A Reading of Classical Chinese Poetry.”
Professor Varsano specializes in classical poetry and poetics from the third through the eleventh centures, with particular interest in literature and subjectivity, the evolution of spatial representation in poetry, the history and poetics of traditional literary criticism, and the theory and practice of translation. She is the author of The Poetry of Li Po and Its Critical Reception (Hawaii, 2003), and is currently working on a book tentatively titled Coming to Our Sense: Locating the Subject in Traditional Chinese Literary Writing.
SATURDAY, March 23, 2013, 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Laura Walker is the author of Follow-Haswed, (Apogee Press 2012), bird book (Shearsman Books, 2011), rimertown/an atlas (U Press, 2008), and swarm lure (Battery Press, 2004), and the chapbook bird book (Albion Books, 2010). Her poetry has appeared in VOLT, Switchback, Ambush, Thermos, and Fact-Simile, as well as in other journals. In conversation with Susan Kolodny and reading from her work.
SATURDAY, June 1, 2013, 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
D.A. Powell is the author of Chronic (2009), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award, and of the trilogy, Tea (Wesleyan, 1998); Lunch (2000); and Cocktails (Graywolf, 2004). His latest book Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (Graywolf, 2012) is currently a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America. In conversation with Forrest Hamer and reading from his work.
PLEASE NOTE NEW LOCATION: All events will be held at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis’s new building at 444 Natoma Street, S.F. (Powell Street BART). All are free and open to the public.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Poetry and Psychoanalysis Special Event
The Poetry and Psychoanalysis series at SFCP will host an interview with Ron Silliman on Sunday, April 8, from 3.30-5.30. Alice Jones will interview him, and books will be available for signing at the end of the event.
Silliman is the author of some 30 books, including an anthology of the Language Poetry literary movement that he helped found with several Bay Area poets during the 1970s. Since 1974, Silliman has been working on a single poem, entitled Ketjak. It is composed of four works: The Age of Huts, Tjanting, The Alphabet, and Universe. With the exception of the book-length poem Tjanting (1981), each of the other projects is also a compilation of texts. Ketjak is also the title of his book-length prose poem published in 1978, which serves as the first section of The Age of Huts (compleat).
Silliman is also the author of a well-respected and widely read poetry blog that he began in 2002.
This special event will occur in the temporary quarters of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, 2340 Jackson Street (enter on Webster), 4th floor, San Francisco. It is free and open to the public, and reservations can be made online at www.sf-cp.org.
Silliman is the author of some 30 books, including an anthology of the Language Poetry literary movement that he helped found with several Bay Area poets during the 1970s. Since 1974, Silliman has been working on a single poem, entitled Ketjak. It is composed of four works: The Age of Huts, Tjanting, The Alphabet, and Universe. With the exception of the book-length poem Tjanting (1981), each of the other projects is also a compilation of texts. Ketjak is also the title of his book-length prose poem published in 1978, which serves as the first section of The Age of Huts (compleat).
Silliman is also the author of a well-respected and widely read poetry blog that he began in 2002.
This special event will occur in the temporary quarters of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, 2340 Jackson Street (enter on Webster), 4th floor, San Francisco. It is free and open to the public, and reservations can be made online at www.sf-cp.org.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Sight inward seeing itself
How Indeterminacy Determines Us
William Bronk
We are so little discernible as such
in so much nothing, it is our privacy
sometimes that startles us: the world is ours;
it is only ours; others that move there,
or seem to, are elsewhere, are in another world,
their world; only, we see from time to time
—shattered, as though we were nothing, or not
stable—sometimes we see what they see,
no world we know. Theirs. Strange. As though
by a momentary shift of little bits
of charges, copper were carbon and felt the weight
and valences of carbon in a changed field
of inertias and reactions, and then were copper again
in a cupreous world. We are left to wonder at
and ponder our privacy and ponder this:
we are two unknowns in a single equation, we
and our world, functions one of the other. Sight
is inward and sees itself, hearing, touch,
are inward. What do we know of an outer world?
As the office poetry reading group goes on hiatus, I offer this poem by William Bronk as one of our last subjects of study. It’s from his 1964 book The World, the Worldless, one of my favorites. I was especially intrigued by the idea of sight inward seeing itself, and the implications similarly for the sensory experiences of hearing and touching. But what proved most fascinating to us was the consideration of privacy as a way to refer to the psychic reality—conscious and unconscious—characterizing each person’s subjectivity. One view of psychic reality proposes that deep subjectivity is limited by and contained within one body; another that privacy is in fact constituted between two or more persons in interaction; and a third which suggests that subjectivity between people is created in reference to—and perhaps because of—a social third manifesting as language, or social structure, or social order. We take our privacy for granted, assuming it belongs to us. But, who and what exactly are we?
Here’s looking to 2012.
William Bronk
We are so little discernible as such
in so much nothing, it is our privacy
sometimes that startles us: the world is ours;
it is only ours; others that move there,
or seem to, are elsewhere, are in another world,
their world; only, we see from time to time
—shattered, as though we were nothing, or not
stable—sometimes we see what they see,
no world we know. Theirs. Strange. As though
by a momentary shift of little bits
of charges, copper were carbon and felt the weight
and valences of carbon in a changed field
of inertias and reactions, and then were copper again
in a cupreous world. We are left to wonder at
and ponder our privacy and ponder this:
we are two unknowns in a single equation, we
and our world, functions one of the other. Sight
is inward and sees itself, hearing, touch,
are inward. What do we know of an outer world?
As the office poetry reading group goes on hiatus, I offer this poem by William Bronk as one of our last subjects of study. It’s from his 1964 book The World, the Worldless, one of my favorites. I was especially intrigued by the idea of sight inward seeing itself, and the implications similarly for the sensory experiences of hearing and touching. But what proved most fascinating to us was the consideration of privacy as a way to refer to the psychic reality—conscious and unconscious—characterizing each person’s subjectivity. One view of psychic reality proposes that deep subjectivity is limited by and contained within one body; another that privacy is in fact constituted between two or more persons in interaction; and a third which suggests that subjectivity between people is created in reference to—and perhaps because of—a social third manifesting as language, or social structure, or social order. We take our privacy for granted, assuming it belongs to us. But, who and what exactly are we?
Here’s looking to 2012.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Work of the World
To Be of Use
Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Goodbye to Kate Leslie, MSW, a colleague in the work, who is moving from the Bay Area to live and work in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She introduced me to this poem, one of her favorites, and it seems apt in thinking not only about the clinical work we do but the work of poetry.
Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Goodbye to Kate Leslie, MSW, a colleague in the work, who is moving from the Bay Area to live and work in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She introduced me to this poem, one of her favorites, and it seems apt in thinking not only about the clinical work we do but the work of poetry.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Understory
To walk out of the field guide
and listen. To wait
for the world to approach with its dapple and hands.
Who are you?
Dreamer On A Short String.
Big Boots Chomping Through The Underbrush.
There’s an understory here, shades
of meaning, tale told by a rock
signifying everything.
To open the grammar of being seen
and let the creatures name you.
Lover Who Begins To Notice.
Figure Of Speech.
I used this poem by Sue Wheeler in a class I'm teaching to illustrate a psychodynamic approach to psychotherapy. The poem alludes to a journey, during which the speaker has the opportunity to encounter what I think is the other within oneself. Concurrent is the opportunity to nurture some sense of a complex understory that can eventually become spoken.
and listen. To wait
for the world to approach with its dapple and hands.
Who are you?
Dreamer On A Short String.
Big Boots Chomping Through The Underbrush.
There’s an understory here, shades
of meaning, tale told by a rock
signifying everything.
To open the grammar of being seen
and let the creatures name you.
Lover Who Begins To Notice.
Figure Of Speech.
I used this poem by Sue Wheeler in a class I'm teaching to illustrate a psychodynamic approach to psychotherapy. The poem alludes to a journey, during which the speaker has the opportunity to encounter what I think is the other within oneself. Concurrent is the opportunity to nurture some sense of a complex understory that can eventually become spoken.
Monday, January 17, 2011
2011 Poetry and Psychoanalysis at SFCP
Poetry & Psychoanalysis will resume on Sunday, February 13, from 3:30-5:30 p.m. at San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (SFCP), 2340 Jackson Street, 4th Floor, San Francisco (entrance on Webster St). We are pleased to announce that our Guest Poet will be Brian Teare (see below) in conversation with Forrest Hamer.
Poetry & Psychoanalysis features a highly accomplished guest poet in informal conversation with one of SFCP’s poet/psychoanalysts about poetry and psychoanalysis and their shared interests in language, the unconscious, the creative process and potential difficulties in that process, as well as how we work as poets (and as analysts) to gain access to and express deep and at times seemingly ineffable human experience. Following the discussion, our guest will read some of his poems and there will be an opportunity for the audience to comment and ask questions. Books will be available for purchase after and the poet to sign them.
Our events have drawn lively audiences of poets, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, painters, poetry editors and teachers, readers of poetry and people wanting to become readers of poetry.
We welcome you to join that audience and our discussion.
Poetry and Psychoanalysis is offered through the Outreach Program of SFCP. Our events are free and open to the public. If you do plan to attend, please notify SFCP by phone at (415) 563-5818 by the Friday before so we will know how many copies of the poems to be discussed should be printed and how many chairs made available.
**********
BRIAN TEARE
A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Brian Teare is the recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts. He has published poetry and criticism in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Ploughshares, St. Mark’s Poetry Project Newsletter, Seneca Review, Verse and VOLT, as well as in the anthologies Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century and At the Barriers: The Poetry of Thom Gunn. He’s published three full-length books—The Room Where I Was Born, Sight Map, and Pleasure—as well as the chapbooks Pilgrim and Transcendental Grammar Crown. On the graduate faculty of the University of San Francisco and Mills College, he lives in San Francisco, where he makes books by hand for his micropress Albion Books.
FUTURE EVENTS:
Sunday, May 1, 2011 Denise Newman in conversation with Susan Kolodny.
Poetry & Psychoanalysis features a highly accomplished guest poet in informal conversation with one of SFCP’s poet/psychoanalysts about poetry and psychoanalysis and their shared interests in language, the unconscious, the creative process and potential difficulties in that process, as well as how we work as poets (and as analysts) to gain access to and express deep and at times seemingly ineffable human experience. Following the discussion, our guest will read some of his poems and there will be an opportunity for the audience to comment and ask questions. Books will be available for purchase after and the poet to sign them.
Our events have drawn lively audiences of poets, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, painters, poetry editors and teachers, readers of poetry and people wanting to become readers of poetry.
We welcome you to join that audience and our discussion.
Poetry and Psychoanalysis is offered through the Outreach Program of SFCP. Our events are free and open to the public. If you do plan to attend, please notify SFCP by phone at (415) 563-5818 by the Friday before so we will know how many copies of the poems to be discussed should be printed and how many chairs made available.
**********
BRIAN TEARE
A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Brian Teare is the recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts. He has published poetry and criticism in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Ploughshares, St. Mark’s Poetry Project Newsletter, Seneca Review, Verse and VOLT, as well as in the anthologies Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century and At the Barriers: The Poetry of Thom Gunn. He’s published three full-length books—The Room Where I Was Born, Sight Map, and Pleasure—as well as the chapbooks Pilgrim and Transcendental Grammar Crown. On the graduate faculty of the University of San Francisco and Mills College, he lives in San Francisco, where he makes books by hand for his micropress Albion Books.
FUTURE EVENTS:
Sunday, May 1, 2011 Denise Newman in conversation with Susan Kolodny.
Monday, October 4, 2010
O Poem, Hopeful Body
After Visiting Hours
Leon Weinmann
All unnecessary weight is eliminated….Even the brain cells needed for song are lost and seasonally replaced in some birds.
--All the Birds of North America, p. 63
At midnight, in the sunroom of the ward,
when you’re locked in your pajamas, stupid
with heartbreak, and your throat a frozen stream,
you’ll read how birds in winter lose their minds,
or lose that part that urges them to sing—
each glad cell dying in the blood, until
they know no love but the sparse, sterile seed,
the bitter pills that fatten and preserve
their hearts against this heartless cold, this dark.
And yet they seem at peace with this: they love,
they turn away from love, they wait for love
to come for them again, and trusting, sing
the song they knew was gone for good—I knew
you’d come back, I knew it, I knew you’d come.
After a long break, it seemed appropriate to return with a poem that speaks and embodies hope, hope also being the implicit character of the efforts we make to make sense of suffering.
Leon Weinmann
All unnecessary weight is eliminated….Even the brain cells needed for song are lost and seasonally replaced in some birds.
--All the Birds of North America, p. 63
At midnight, in the sunroom of the ward,
when you’re locked in your pajamas, stupid
with heartbreak, and your throat a frozen stream,
you’ll read how birds in winter lose their minds,
or lose that part that urges them to sing—
each glad cell dying in the blood, until
they know no love but the sparse, sterile seed,
the bitter pills that fatten and preserve
their hearts against this heartless cold, this dark.
And yet they seem at peace with this: they love,
they turn away from love, they wait for love
to come for them again, and trusting, sing
the song they knew was gone for good—I knew
you’d come back, I knew it, I knew you’d come.
After a long break, it seemed appropriate to return with a poem that speaks and embodies hope, hope also being the implicit character of the efforts we make to make sense of suffering.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)