Once again, a really interesting post, but I don't know what to say because my knowledge of psychological concepts such as narcism is pretty sketchy. I understand what you are saying about the phenomenon, the 'lopsided' thing especially, because I know that I often feel that something is going on in a poem that does not actually appear in the poem etc, but it's a mystery to me. My reading of Lacan is superficial to say the least.

On 27 Nov 2014, at 16:54, [log in to unmask] wrote:

Hi Tim and Sean,

It is possible to see a poem that is free of any ego as simply one part of a complex-- the narcissistic side, or self-invested side, remaining hidden. Such a poem is lopsided in its
presentation --truncating the field as it were, if one were to speak in the vein of Olson-- though one can usually feel something of what has been left out, precisely because the field is the field.
I am always surprised at this when I notice it, as I can imagine a poetry that describes the ego accurately to be as harrowing and enlightening as any undertaken, and one suitable for both a new kind of lyric and as a project worthy of an avant garde.

David

On Nov 27, 2014, at 3:46 PM, Tim Allen wrote:

Yes, but there's still a difference between the ego being present within a poem and the ego remaining outside a poem, by which I mean we can write a poem which has no 'self' in it at all but about which we can feel very proud etc. We can be subjectively ego-centric about our objectivity.

I also like it when writers are objective about their nature as subjects, and I think a lot of the stuff I personally rate highly does that somehow.

Tim

On 27 Nov 2014, at 14:33, Sean Carey wrote:

The ego never really goes despite our efforts to try to sidetrack it from our consciousness when writing leaving total objectivity impossible in any field of human endeavour.