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.