I have recently made a point of attending more poetry readings. I hear a range of quality of poetry at these events. What stands out when people get up in front of an audience and read their poetry is that some poets are in closer touch with unconscious process and can let that process more immediately shape the content of their poetry. The metaphors are therefore fresher and have a quality of startling the hearer and making one say, “I think I knew that, but I don't think I knew it that way, until just now.”
In reading Sandra Walker's poem below, I was first struck by its lyrical quality, and then by the immediacy and freshness of the images that she allows to shine through.
The small, somber canvas wasn't present in our meetings then,or I never wondered of it.Now it lives.You break silence to retrace its lineage:Freud's Wolf Man crossing boundaries in Berlinto paint the Danube from forbidden hills.Your story flows.I see the picture changing hands, crossing continents.Not beautiful, it is soft, unobtrusively displayed,your historic treasure.He, you tell me, risked arrest, crossed, again, political dividesto teach a girl to paint.I wonderif the Danube flows through years, breaksinto rivulets in urban, concrete deltas.I can see it.Teach me how to paint.
Sandra C. Walker, M.D., is editor of APsaA's best practices bulletin, Forward!, a member of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute faculty, and an assistant professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington. Sheri A. Hunt, M.D., who edits this column, is a candidate at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in both the adult and child training programs. A published poet and member of TAP's editorial board, she welcomes reader comments and suggestions at .