Essay On Psychiatrists Poem Rhyme Scheme

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Robert Pinsky

Essay On Psychiatrists Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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I Invocation	A
	-
It s crazy to think one could describe them	B
Calling on reason fantasy memory eves and ears	C
As though they were all alike any more	D
	-
Than sweeps opticians poets or masseurs	C
Moreover they are for more than one reason	A
Difficult to speak of seriously and freely	E
	-
And I have never even this is difficult to say	C
Plainly without foolishness or irony	E
Consulted one for professional help though it happens	C
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Many or most of my friends have and that	F
Perhaps is why it seems urgent to try to speak	G
Sensibly about them about the psychiatrists	C
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II Some Terms	C
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Shrink is a misnomer The religious	C
Analogy is all wrong too and the old	H
Half forgotten jokes about Viennese accents	C
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And beards hardly apply to the good looking woman	A
In boots and a knit dress or the man	I
Seen buying the Sunday Times in mutton chop	J
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Whiskers and expensive running shoes	C
In a way I suspect that even the terms doctor	K
And therapist are misnomers the patient	L
	-
Is not necessarily sick And one assumes	C
That no small part of the psychiatrist s	C
Role is just that to point out misnomers	C
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III Proposition	A
	-
These are the first citizens of contingency	C
Far from the doctrinaire past of the old ones	C
They think in their prudent meditations	C
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Not about ecstasy the soul leaving the body	C
Nor enthusiasm the god entering one s person	A
Nor even about sanity which means	C
	-
Health an impossible perfection	A
But ponder instead relative truth and the warm	M
Dusk of amelioration The cautious	C
	-
Young augurs with their family life good books	C
And records and foreign cars believe	N
In amelioration in that and in suffering	O
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IV A Lakeside Identification	A
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Yes crazy to suppose one could describe them	B
And yet there was this incident at the local beach	P
Clouds of professors and the husbands of professors	C
	-
Swam dabbled or stood to talk with arms folded	Q
Gazing at the lake and one of the few townsfolk there	R
With no faculty status a matter of fact competent	S
	-
Catholic woman of twenty seven with five children	A
And a first rate body pointed her finger	K
At the back of one certain man and asked me	C
	-
Is that guy a psychiatrist and by god he was Yes	C
She said He looks like a psychiatrist	T
Grown quiet I looked at his pink back and thought	U
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V Physical Comparison With Professors And Others	C
	-
Pink and a bit soft bodied with a somewhat jazzy	C
Middle class bathing suit and sandy sideburns to me	C
He looked from the back like one more professor	K
	-
And from the front too the boyish unformed carriage	V
Which foreigners always note in American men combined	W
As in a professor with that liberal quizzical	X
	-
Articulate gaze so unlike the more focused more	D
Tolerant expression worn by a man of action surgeon	A
Salesman athlete On closer inspection was there	R
	-
Perhaps a self satisfied benign air a too studied	Y
Gentleness toward the child whose hand he held loosely	C
Absurd to speculate but then the woman saw something	O
	-
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VI Their Seriousness With Further Comparisons	C
	-
In a certain sense they are not serious	C
That is they are serious useful deeply helpful	X
Concerned only in the way that the pilots of huge	Z
	-
Planes radiologists and master mechanics can	I
At their best be serious But however profound	A2
The psychiatrists may be they are not serious the way	C
	-
A painter may be serious beyond pictures or a businessman	I
May be serious beyond property and cash or even	B2
The way scholars and surgeons are serious each rapt	C2
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In his work s final cause contingent upon nothing	O
Beyond work persons recoveries And this is fitting	O
Who would want to fly with a pilot who was serious	C
	-
About getting to the destination safely Terrifying idea	D2
That a pilot could over extend perhaps try to fly	E2
Too well or suffer from Pilot s Block of course	C
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It may be that just as they must not drink liquor	K
Before a flight they undergo regular required check ups	C
With a psychiatrist to prevent such things from happening	O
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VII Historical The Bacchae	P
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Madness itself as an idea leaves us confused	F2
Incredulous that it exists or cruelly facetious	C
Or stricken with a superstitious awe as if bound	A2
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By the lost cults of Trebizond and Pergamum	C
The most profound study of madness is found	A2
In the Bacchae of Euripides so deeply disturbing	O
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That in Cambridge Massachusetts the players	C
Evaded some of the strongest unsettling material	X
By portraying poor sincere fuddled decent Pentheus	C
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As a sort of fascistic bureaucrat but it is Dionysus	C
Who holds rallies instills exaltations of violence	C
With his leopards and atavistic troops above law	G2
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Reason and the good sense and reflective dignity	C
Of Pentheus Pentheus humiliated addled made to suffer	K
Atrocity as a minor jest of the smirking God	H2
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When Bacchus s Chorus who call him most gentle observe	I2
Ten thousand men have ten thousand hopes some fail	J2
Some come to fruit but the happiest man is he	C
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Who gathers the good of life day by day as though	K2
Life itself were enough does that mean to leave ambition	A
And is it a kind of therapy or truth Or both	L2
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VIII A Question	A
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On the subject of madness the Bacchae seems	C
On the whole more pro than contra The Chorus	C
Says of wine There is no other medicine for misery	C
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When the Queen in her ecstasy or her enthusiasm	C
Tears her terrified son s arm from his body or bears	C
His head on her spear she remains happy so long	M2
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As she remains crazy the God himself who bound fawnskin	A
To the women s flesh armed them with ivy arrows	C
And his orgies livery debases poor Pentheus first	N2
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Then leads him to mince capering towards female Death	O2
And dismemberment flushed grinning the grave young	P2
King of Thebes pulls at a slipping bra strap simpers	C
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Down at his turned ankle Pentheus Should I lift up	Q2
Mount Cith ron Bacchae mother and all	R2
Dionysus Do what you want to do Your mind	W
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Was unstable once but now you sound more sane	A
You are on your way to great things	C
The question is Which is the psychiatrist Pentheus or Dionysus	C
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IX Pentheus As Psychiatrist	T
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With his reasonable questions Pentheus tries	C
To throw light on the old customs of savagery	C
Like a brave doctor he asks about it all	R2
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He hears everything Weird fantastic things	C
The Messenger calls them with their breasts	C
Swollen their new babies abandoned mothers	C
	-
Among the Bacchantes nestled gazelles	C
And young wolves in their arms and suckled them	C
You might see a single one of them tear a fat calf	S2
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In two still bellowing with fright while others	C
Clawed heifers to pieces ribs and hooves	C
Were strewn everywhere blood smeared scraps	C
	-
Hung from the fir trees furious bulls	C
Charged and then fell stumbling pulled down	A
To be stripped of skin and flesh by screaming women	A
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And Pentheus listened Flames burned in their hair	R
Unnoticed thick honey spurted from their wands	C
And the snakes they wore like ribbons licked	T2
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Hot blood from their flushed necks Pentheus	C
Was the man the people told weird things like	U2
A middle class fantasy of release and when even	A
	-
The old men bent Cadmus and Tiresias dress up	Q2
In fawnskin and ivy beating their wands on the ground	A2
Trying to carouse it is Pentheus down to earth	V2
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Sober who raises his voice in the name of dignity	C
Being a psychiatrist how could he attend to the Chorus s warning	O
Against those who aspire and a tongue without reins	C
	-
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X Dionysus As Psychiatrist	T
	-
In a more hostile view the psychiatrists	C
Are like Bacchus the knowing smirk of his mask	W2
His patients his confident guidance of passion	A
	-
And even his little jokes as when the great palace	C
Is hit by lightning which blazes and stays	C
Bouncing among the crumpled stone walls	C