Sh'ma, I Hear Voices: Poems. By Merle Heidi Molofsky:  International Psychoanalytic Books, 2024,  209 pp.

Sh'ma is an engaging, “edgy” collection of poems by psychoanalyst and poet Merle Molofsky. I agree with psychoanalyst Richard Reichbart, who in his introduction to the book highlights the stirring and, at times, uneasy effects of the poetry's “unexpected rhythms and taut and sudden rhymes and meanings” (p. 3). Impressed by Merle's creative voice, Reichbart credits Thomas Ogden (1998) with lauding the tight (language-dependent) bond linking psychoanalysis and poetry: “If we listen to the ways they [poets] go about creating life in language and bringing language to life, we might further develop our own ways of listening and finding words to describe how a person … goes about bringing him/herself into being through language” (p. 428).

I am moved by Merle's risk-taking openness and forceful imagination. Her poems bring life to multiple dimensions of internal experience—a mélange of pictorial, sensorial, and cerebral expression. At times, the reader can find herself witnessing a psychoanalytic session, a voice that is vulnerable and exposed. A poem that captures the destructive loss of psychic boundaries is “Logic and I: In Duet” (p. 48)1:

I will begin this review with general impressions of the book, then offer a selection of poem segments that represent a sample of the wide field of subject matter.

The title of the book, Sh'ma, I Hear Voices, resonates with etaphoric meaning. I wonder what Merle, the analyst-poet, is suggesting? I

believe she is putting forth a request to be heard, to be listened to with a patient and attuned ear. I hear a call for the reader to listen well, to hear many elements that arise from within the self (Bion, 1962/1977). Sh'ma, a Hebrew word meaning “to hear,” conjures up the need for close attention. The poet wants to be heard.

The poems' broad reach spans the life cycle, replete with recollection, imagery, dialogue, an