Essay On Psychiatrists Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCD CAE CEC FGC C CHC AIJ CKL CCC A CCC CAC AMC CNO A BPC QRS AKC CTU C CCK VWX DAR YCO C CXZ IA2C IB2C2 OOC D2E2C KCO P F2CA2 CA2O CXC CCG2 CKH2 I2J2C K2AL2 A CCC CCM2 ACN2 O2P2C Q2R2W ACC T CCR2 CCC CCS2 CCC CAA RCT2 CU2A Q2A2V2 COC T CW2A CCCI Invocation | A |
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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 |
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Than sweeps opticians poets or masseurs | C |
Moreover they are for more than one reason | A |
Difficult to speak of seriously and freely | E |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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Health an impossible perfection | A |
But ponder instead relative truth and the warm | M |
Dusk of amelioration The cautious | C |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
Robert Pinsky
(1)
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