The Analyst: Poems

by Molly Peacock

Overview

“Whatever the subject, rich music follows the tap of Molly Peacock’s baton.”—Washington Post

When a psychoanalyst became a painter after surviving a stroke, her longtime patient, distinguished and beloved poet Molly Peacock, took up a unique task. Weaving an invigorating tapestry of images, Peacock’s poetry bears witness to a profound role reversal as its author looks back on a forty-year relationship with her one-time analyst, now friend.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393254723
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/03/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	251 KB

About the Author

Molly Peacock is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Analyst: Poems and Cornucopia: New and Selected Poems. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Table of Contents

Part 1 The Pottery Jar

Gusto 3

The Analyst Draws 6

Thoughts Are Things 8

George Herbert's Glasse Of Blessings 9

Speaking Of Painting And Bird Watching 11

Fret Not 15

The Pottery Jar 17

The Art Of The Stroke 23

Part 2 The Hours

Lucky Message 27

Riddle, Or The Therapy Hour 29

Credo 30

Mount Anger 31

The Canning Jar 34

The Analyst's Promise 37

How To Say "Thank You" In French 39

The Analyst's Severe Arthritis 47

Tuesday Tombstone 49

Paid Love 50

Part 3 Ruby Roses, Kiss Goodbye

Ruby Roses, Kiss Goodbye 55

The Heaven Of Lost Earrings 56

Dream Strawberry 59

Hayfield Poetica 60

Authors 63

Stirrups In The Emergency Room 70

Pajama School 73

Riddle: Moon & Sun 74

Part 4 Whisper of Liberty

Life, Lightened 77

A Face, A Cup 79

Shadow 80

The Carcass Coat 81

The Massage 82

Contemplating Your Progress 83

Seeing Is A Meal In Itself 85

The Nurse Tree 86

A Fall In The Fall 88

The Peephole 94

Whisper Of Liberty 96

In Our Unexpected Future 98

Mandala In The Making 99

Notes 101

Editorial Reviews

12/19/2016
In her seventh poetry collection, multigenre writer Peacock (The Second Blush) explores, through frank and tender portraits, the post-stroke life of her longtime psychoanalyst. She uses verbal collage to capture childhood memory and textures the poems with the realities faced by a brilliant, yet newly impaired mind. Peacock describes the pauses while she waits for her analyst to recall simple words: “the burnt edge of the memory gorge/ you have to make a path around/ starts to crumble—don’t fall in!” Weaved among these quiet accounts of conversations, visits, and the occasional outing together are the ups and downs of the “One thousand two-hundred and ninety-four hours” that Peacock spent in sessions over the course of her life. Working through trauma, despair, and failed relationships on her analyst’s couch, Peacock reflects on these moments in third person: “Thank you for waving goodbye as that young woman/ set off to cohabit with a man who wore a bathrobe/ till 5 in the afternoon and smelled of Balkan Sobranies.” Yet what exactly is the relationship between analyst and patient? “But you paid her, didn’t you?/ How that question endures,” Peacock confesses. Whether justifying existence, addressing memory, or pondering a lack thereof, Peacock notes that “it isn’t what happened that lasts./ Not art, either, but the savory core. What’s felt.” (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Guided to ‘listen, question, and watch things heal,’ I felt both the sting of recognition and the balm of comfort in these honest, graceful poems."

Rachel Zucker

"There’s a spellbinding intimacy here, between analyst and patient, the two women characters, and, most importantly, between poet and reader. A compelling examination of how much we depend on others, especially when it comes to ‘seeing’ ourselves through someone else’s eyes. Needless to say, the real subject is love."

Philip Schultz

"The Analyst… has its share of impossible emotions. But it is also a book about possible healing.… In previous books, Peacock has shown us how the repetitions of poetic form can contain the ruptures of violence. Here, she shows us how they can also enact processes of growth and change; of hard-won, incremental revision."

Literary Review of Canada

"Psychoanalysis has always been of a piece with the various languages of literature—a kind of practical poetry—taking its life, as theory and practice, from a larger world of words. A session lasts 50 minutes, [and it’s] always at the same time each week, the way a sonnet is 14 lines. As Molly Peacock superbly demonstrates in The Analyst, the form makes possible the articulation."

Adam Phillips

"A remarkable account of the restorative power of creativity.… [Peacock’s] poetry’s orderly grace can seem paradoxical when she’s describing intense, chaotic emotions. But that lyrical craft is exactly what makes these poems resonate."

Toronto Star

"This relationship [between Peacock and her psychoanalyst] is not just described and honored but is also used as a metaphor for poetry itself.… With Peacock the human body heals two by two."

Poetry

"A new, visceral, twenty-first century ‘in memoriam’ of ambiguous loss in which Peacock brilliantly tells the story of a decades-long patient-therapist relationship that now reverses and continues to evolve."

Jewish Book Council

"Peacock’s manuscript constitutes an instructional manual, crash course, or abstract painting of the complex world. It gives the reader an intimate view of how two people see each other through the various crises of their lives, how the poet and the painter balance alongside as they look into their conscious lives and past the edges of their consciousness to their dreams, memories, emotions, inspirations, and aspirations."

Pleiades

"Anyone who has undergone therapy will appreciate Peacock’s insights into the process, and everyone can gain from her exploration of human connection and creativity."

Quill & Quire

"With gusto, compassion, and wit matched by consummate craft and remarkable tonal range, Peacock revels in the liberties of language. The stroke of the ‘intimate witness’ (the poet’s beloved analyst) spurs a series of lyric meditations on the forces that shape and reshape identity. With the singular achievement of her seventh collection, Peacock transforms her art."

Phillis Levin

12/01/2016
Writing in homage to her former therapist, Peacock (poet, essayist, president of the Poetry Society of America) here traces their nearly 40-year relationship. Using lush language and imagery, her poems move between free verse and rhyme and sometimes adapt traditional forms, so that each poem is formally distinctive. In these poems, Peacock explores "the burnt edge of memory" as she highlights how life changes yet moves forward and what it is that makes us human shows itself. While not all the poems center on the titular figure, Peacock's sumptuous use of image and color holds the collection together, particularly the color red: red-winged birds, "red fish painted on enamel," brain-hemorrhaging red, "a deep red blanket" on a cot, and the "tiny fist" of a strawberry. This, in combination with the subject matter and themes explored, lends the poems a painterly quality. Though seemingly everything has changed in their relationship—the analyst is now a painter—a profound connection remains: "Only when/ something's over can its shape materialize." VERDICT A rich and important selection for most collections.—Karla Huston, Appleton, WI

Library Journal