This Poem was Submitted By: Mark Andrew Hislop On Date: 2005-11-16 05:04:25 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!

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Therapy

I discovered how cheap therapy is the day I realised I’d already paid  for most of it in advance. You asked me  about my resentment of you and the money you must take, and I called you a car  repayment: if I resent anything, it’s the need to write this poem. With all its symbols and allusions therapy is no substitute for poetry: its tears are an anti-romantic disinfectant, a sorrow to side-step because it’s genuine pain, not its simulacrum in a bunker all gaudied up for a May Day parade  of arid diorama and cupidity's  blind arrows flying wildly at eye-level.                                 If you’re lucky  I might tell you something one day,  but my official carrier pigeon  has wings that beat silently with shame.

Copyright © November 2005 Mark Andrew Hislop

Additional Notes:
For Sue Austin.


This Poem was Critiqued By: Thomas Edward Wright On Date: 2005-11-26 12:13:28
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.82353
Minky. tew


This Poem was Critiqued By: Tony P Spicuglia On Date: 2005-11-23 12:08:18
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.95238
Mark, also known a s MAH - there is so much within this piece, I think I’d have to be a therapist (or friend) to figure out just which lines are facetious, and which are just the barb of barbarism. There is no doubt throughout, the heart that smarts, and the cause of the alarm. “if I resent anything, it’s the need to write this poem” – there is no doubt to the therapeutic or (inciting) result of composing, and maybe (inciting might also be a form of literary therapy, so I’ll drop the caveat) within the transition from emotion to brain to cuneiform, the soul can find its way out. “repayment/resent” it speaks particularly to an impasse, and yet, your “carrier pigeon” wings beat “silently with shame” – either your are accepting your role in the impasse, or adding repayment to the resentment and are saying “I’d give you my best, but you already stole it, walked on it, and sold it”. The best of the verse “therapy is no so substitute for poetry… “simulacrum in a bunker””. Maybe this has only a vague resemblance to the cronyism of therapy, but it is a very stimulating read!! Thanks for the reminder!!
This Poem was Critiqued By: James C. Horak On Date: 2005-11-16 13:11:47
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.89474
Alright, Mark, you've asked for it and I'm going to give it to you. Your poem has the "meat" to be a masterpiece. Only the application of discipline is needed to accomplish that. As I have said to another promising poet, the "thing" we must all strive for, is to produce a "letter to the world" quality. To find something so universsal, both in imagery and in context, no sensitive reader walks away unsatisfied. In the way the poet wishes to satisfy. This is the difference between poetry and prose, not form, not, that much, language. Poetry is the charm that sets upon all its audience, a message free from the suspicion of motive. For when it does, the Muse has spoken, that God or Goddess, of clarity. It is the Muse that sets free the fetters from the poet's heart. Have I accomplished this? I can't answer. I want to...G..Damnit, I am devoted to...but I don't know. I can point to others that have, even in just one tiny little line, placed just at the right place, lightly touching the heavy or heaviily touching the light....just the way no one else has. I may end my days grieving, like the accomplished Thomas Hardy, over not being able to bring myself to having belief I had. Now, for where I as a critic share with you exactly where I'm coming from and how that gives me some degree of license to venture where I might otherwise be presumed to tread. My first wife was given a graduate assistanceship to Michigan State. I came with her, while still an undergraduate. Our marriage grew increasingly stormy and it soon became clear most of the problems came back to her father and to what she erroneously perceived, at some level or another, to be a "commonality" he shared with all other men. I don't need to go into details. At my suggestion, we sought professional "therapy". This came down, after two years, to providing her with nothing more than feeling more justified in her ruthless approach to dealing with me, something each therapist confessed was a failed result and for which no explanation could be given. One "professional" idiot did say I might try beating her when she might attack me. During this time I had been accepted into a graduate program in the Department of Canadian-American Relations. The chairman of my committee knew I had enormous bills to pay trying to help my wife. He found me an opportunity to work for a think tank, The Ford Foundation, on a contract basis and I was given a project that allowed me to unwittingly become personna non grata with the Canadian government and finally left me unable to pursue a career I would have liked to pursue, by leading to disallowing me the status to work in Canada when the project required it. All because I perceived I needed to provide my wife with care I couldn't really afford AND that "therapy" might help someone not suffering from any actual malady except pathological narcissism. So, when you employ an otherwise oblique, though highly cerebric illusion, like, "its tears are an anti-romantic disinfectant" I know only too well your meaning...but others may not, others we, as poets, are obliged to share meaning with more fully. Here, that can be done by simply adding something like the line, {to wash away the guilt, unearned or not} are wherever you might care to go with this truth you've stirred into breath. Cupidity is a wonderful pun upon Cupid, but you have to do more to earn the carry into image. You want more than pun, you have to employ an adroit simile, not just slide into pun and expect it to suffice. The last three lines have a beauty all their own, but one might understandably miss the subtle irony here. Any penetrating reader has already detected the silent anger intensely drawing up, go ahead and give it vent. I know you can without losing to the brutish. In the end you can find more, a universal anchor here you've missed. One that could point the reader into one of many possible "findings". Again, considerations I know you possess. I would "instruct"...mainly because I personally am so inclined, but you might choose to be more subtle...and you could. Still, I kind of like, in some way, to expose the quackery of modern psychoanalysis a little more when it is divorced from any real care for the patient...which it too often is, only beginning with the wallet. JCH
This Poem was Critiqued By: Mark Steven Scheffer On Date: 2005-11-16 10:10:48
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 8.27273
MAH, Excellent poem. The odd placement of the line "If you're lucky" says something about . . . luck. Aren't I bright? Really good one. I told Terry recently that "form" was bull or something like that. Well, I take that back. This one shows that structure, form is everything. A view I will hold 'til the next poem I read, I'm sure. Now . . . give me my medicine. MSS
This Poem was Critiqued By: Rachel F. Spinoza On Date: 2005-11-16 08:57:57
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
what a remarkable and powerful poem! ...to side-step because it’s genuine pain, not its simulacrum in a bunker all gaudied up for a May Day parade [great!} of arid diorama and cupidity's [I think just "cupid's" would be fine here, "Cupidity is more clever of course - but the whole phrase is wildy alive and the word "cupidity " made me stop for a second and took me out of the action. blind arrows flying wildly at eye-level. the closing image is amazing. best Rach
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