In Susan Kolodny's poem, I am caught by the image of the human shadow above the patterned fish suspended above its shadow suspended above darker fish hovering above their shadows, presumably or possibly above other fish above other shadows. The looping of the fish and the interweaving of the layers of shadows suggest an intriguing invitation into the indigo and faint green world of which Susan Kolodny has written. Analysts would not be able to resist casting their own shadows into the pond and therefore swimming around a bit with these fish and their shadow companions.
Kolodny recently graduated from the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, where she now teaches the psychoanalytic writing course. Her poetry has appeared in many journals, including New England Review and Beloit Poetry Journal, and several anthologies. She is the author of The Captive Muse: On Creativity and Its Inhibition (PsychoSocial Press, 2000). She is in private practice in Oakland, California.
Our shadows bring them from the shadows:a bright yellow one with a navy patternlike a Japanese woodblock print of fish scales;a fat, 18-karat one splashed with gaudy purpleand a patch of gray; one with a gold head,a body skim-milk-white, trailing ventral finslike half-unfolded fans of lace;a peach-colored, faintly disheveled one,and one, compact, all indigo in faint green water.They wear comical whiskers and gather beneath usas we lean on the cement railingin indecisive late December light,and because we do not feed them, they pass,then they loop and circle back. Loop and circle. Loop.“Look,” you say, “beneath them.” Beneath them,like a subplot or a motive, is a schoolof uniformly dark ones, smaller, unadorned,perhaps another species, living in the shadowof the gold, purple, yellow, indigo and white,seeking the mired roots and dusky grasses,unliveried, the quieter beneath the quiet.
—Susan Kolodny
New England Review
Sheri Hunt, M.D., 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 readers' comments and suggestions at .