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Hi Tim, I've always been interested in psychology, but I don't believe psychology can explain away poetry. That's why I like poetry so much. On the other hand, if a poetics makes a claim about psychological things, then it's fair to see what psychology has to say about it. I have never been able to make much headway with Lacan myself. The presentation, for the most part mediated through his students, is dense and complex, and I have never had the inclination to sit down and struggle with it. I have at times had an interest in Freud, Jung and the Gestaltists-- with some training in Gestalt. What I know about narcissism mostly comes from my encounters with it in myself, as with projections, reaction formations and so many other things. Infinitely embarrassing, but instructive. I agree with you that the presentation of the self directly and "in the raw" is something to appreciate. It seems more honest to me, and I like that. As Yeats said, though one does not have to write like him to subscribe to it, " there's more enterprise in walking naked." So I am also of the mind that poetry can be formed anecdotally and/or out of personal experience, but that,as someone said recently here on the list, everything depends on how you approach that experience. I would also say that there is nothing that can be apprehended consciously or unconsciously that does not qualify as experience. David On Nov 28, 2014, at 11:04 AM, Tim Allen wrote: > Hi David, > > 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. > > I will say though that I always appreciate poetry where the ego seems to be displayed in the raw, as it were, and this does produce what I consider to be a form of lyricism. > > Cheers > > Tim > > 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. >>> >> >