THE BOSTON PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETY AND INSTITUTE
15 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts

Is pleased to announce a

SPECIAL MEMBERS SEMINAR
Patricia Wright, MD and Jack Beinashowitz, PhD, Co-Chairs

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2007
8:00 pm at 15 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

Forgetting  and  Remembering
In  Poetry  and  Psychoanalysis

Presenter
ROBERT PINSKY

Discussant
HAROLD J. BURSZTAJN, MD

Robert Pinsky, United States Poet Laurate (1997-2000) reads from and discusses his most recent collection of poems, Gulf Music.  One focus for exploration will be the varieties of remembering and forgetting experienced via poetry and psychoanalysis:

The loathsome part of American Zen for me
Is in the Parable of the Raft: a traveler
Hacks it from driftwood tugged from the very current
That wedged it into the mud, and lashes it
With bitter roots he strips between his teeth.
And after the raft has carried him across
The torrent in his path, the teacher says,
The traveler doesn't lift the raft on his back
And lug it with him on his journey: oh no,
He leaves it there behind him, doesn't he?
There must be something spoiled in the translation.

- excerpted from "The Thicket" in Gulf Music

Robert Pinsky is the author of many books of poetry, most recently Gulf Music (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007).  The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996, won the 1997 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. His honors include the William Carlos Williams Award, the PEN Volcker Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for his translation The Inferno of Dante. He is poetry editor of Slate and writes the weekly "Poet's Choice" column for the Washington Post Book World. During his unprecedented three terms as United States Poet Laureate, he founded the Favorite Poem Project (www.favoritepoem.org).

Harold J. Bursztajn is Co-Founder of the Program in Psychiatry and the Law at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry of Harvard Medical School and a member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

Gulf Music is available at amazon.com and area bookstores. 

Additional "Note" from Gulf Music with special reference to memory and forgetting, available on request at office@bostonpsychoanalytic.org.