This collection of notebooks, written parallel to my 30 years of practice in psychiatry, is a diverse collection of works ranging from serious poetry, light verse and doggerel, to epigrams, cartoons, graphics, drawings, paintings, songs and poetic animations. This series of poems was featured in my previous website, www.adventuresincreativity.net. Most of them are them are available as books at www.lulu.com/jgyoungmd
The first group of poems, “‘SCRIPTIONS,” were often written while I was waiting for patients to show up for an appointment or during a no-show. The patients would be in my mind whether they sat across from me or not. At times I would actively share the poems with them as appropriate; at other times I would leave copies of an earlier version of “‘SCRIPTIONS” in the waiting room. Often patients would comment about one poem or another, usually if they saw themselves or their conflicts within. These poems or sketches (descriptions) were drawn to help patients see themselves and the process of insight-oriented psychotherapy more clearly. The sketches were not complete renderings; their elaboration occurred in the rest of the therapy process.
Some poems were quite experimental as my interest in creativity opened me up to trying new forms and inventions within the genre of poetry. Thus I experimented with concrete poems where I would draw what I was speaking about (inscriptions) with artistic typesetting. In other concrete poems the typographical features predominate. For example, I took the punctuation of e. e. cummings’ poems a step further and found, within the actual words of the poem, new words that added to the theme, especially in the poem, “Alcoholism in n-Dimensions.” One can find a whole new poem within the original one. By shifting a letter or two, the meaning changes such as “Fl/right or [flight and fright] in the poem “Missed Appointments or the poem, “Therapy Duel/t” or [duel and duet]. Even single words can be graphically poetic, a la “BALANCE” in the later poem The Tragic Comedy of Zen.” The missing “I’s” in the teardrop-shaped poem, “On the Need for Biofeedback Therapy,” suggests the missing sense of being a subject in one’s own life, one’s sense of “I,” as patients and therapists try to objectify everything, including themselves, reflecting the scientific bent of our society.
Poetry, for me, along with art and music has been a loving focus of creative and personal expression. Some times I would write poetry when I could not express, with painting or drawing, the complexities of the emotions I was feeling. For example, when I spontaneously improvise music on the piano, I experience emotional release, but because I am not skilled at reading and writing the notes, I do not develop the themes I invented in the same way as I can work and re-work my poems. There are however, a few poems that I did develop into songs such as the poem, Invitation, which is sung by my friend Gino Conti. I illustrated other poems with drawings or paintings from my Adventures in Creativity Online Art Gallery. Composers such as Anthony Fidel also used some of these poems for a serious musical composition for his Ph.D. work in musicology.
With poetry, unlike my music, I can go back over a poem many times till it seemed right–the carbon is sometimes pressed into a diamond. But many times, as Lois Hayna, my poetry teacher, would say, “a poem is not completed, only abandoned.”
The notebook, “THE ANIMAL CENSUS,” is an elaboration of a shorter poem by the same name that was found in “‘SCRIPTIONS.” I wrote it in the year of the census taking. The simple cartoon line drawings were drawn to suggest a children’s book, although it was written for adults. This playfully illustrated “children’s book for adults” is full of double entendres and asks the question, “What kind of animal are you?” In psychiatry, diagnosis is always part of the treatment. To paraphrase my supervisor, Herb Schlesinger, Ph.D.,
Therapy is giving
the patient
diagnoses patiently.(prescriptions)
The notebook, “ACCIDENT AT RT. 436 AND REDBUG ROAD,” contains poetry of a more traditional kind found in poetry therapy when self-expression is the important consideration, and it may become creative expression. I hope most moved beyond “journal junk.” I used the forms of poetry to serve as a containing function, so that my feelings during a very difficult time in my life could be faced and worked through.
The notebook, LOVE AND HUMAN SEXUALITY, shows the range of experiences from affection, attraction, love, to raw sexuality and raunchiness. As psychiatrists, from the time of Freud, we have learned the importance of love and sexuality in the human experience. Although we may not focus on it as the only underlying drive to all human effort, it is very important. Sexuality ranges from the sublime to the raw. A psychiatrist has to be able to listen to patients talking about all aspects of the human experience. Thus in my psychiatric residency we were, in fact, assigned to go to see a porno flick just to being able to face a range of experience without flinching. Thus this section is “X rated.”
The next notebook, ODDS AND ENDS, is a collection of poems written over the years that did not fit into the categories above. It is an odd collection, some scraps and some sophisticated poems that even might be considered poetry.
The notebook, THE TRAGIC COMEDY OF ZEN, takes a philosophical bend and looks at issues of emptiness, negative space, responsibility and meaning. It plays with the idea of the T)ea ceremony. It ends with the end game of life and asks what the meaning of it all is? Written recently during a time of an exacerbation of my wife’s multiple sclerosis, it takes a serious, sometimes ironic, and occasionally funny approach to the very serious issues of living, illness, and dying. During this period I began to add to many of my poems,animations, which I had recently learned to do in the process of creating my video, The Creative Adventure. The use of animation adds a whole new approach to poetry and the genre of “Intermedia” in which various art forms are blended into a new being.
The notebook, ECSTATIC VARIATIONS,plays with associations that come from a more preconsious and unconscious level. I am surprised at times with the connections, some of which others see quite differently. Poetry in this form is something like a dream which can be interpreted in several ways.
The final notebook, POEMS AT AN EXHIBITION,evolved out of my paintings. I had done several paintings based on photographs I had taken over the years. Many focused on the challenges we have faced as a family with multiple sclerosis, deafness and blindness. Visual images led to a visual poem in which one complimented the other. I also began adding music background to several of them.
I hope you have as much enjoyment experiencing these notebooks as I did in creating them.
Acknowledgements
I had many discussions of poems with my friend, Michael Gilbert. Our poetry group with Lois Hayna also gave useful input to earlier versions of ‘SCRIPTIONS.’ Later on, another poetry group initiated by my friend Ran Huntsberry, was instrumental in bringing this final version into being.
Acknowledgements for Poems previously published
Blue Unicorn for Expired Verse
The Denver Post, “Poetry Forum” for Backseat Driven, Sublime, Fear of Crying, Timid Tiger, Hard to Take Taking, Hardly a Bouquet, For the Birds, Spring Exchange
The Emissary for Blindspots, Around the Subject, Birdfeeder
The Foothills Flyer for Bad Debts, Therapy Duel/t, Blindspots, Pictures at a Sidewalk Show, After the Fall, End Enough
Gumbo for On the Need for Biofeedback Therapy
Psychiatric Opinion for Manic Panic, Therapist’s Waiting Room, Fearful Motivation, Alcoholism in n-Dimensions, Therapy Duel/t, Dream Maker, Lost Present
Second Page for Like a Diamond, Half Whole
S.E.L.E.C.T: Creative/Innovative Approaches for Recognizing the New
Trail and Timberline for Thoughts from my Window