To me, BOTH of these poems are "Analysts' poems," "Therapists' poems," "Therapy poems," what-have you. Both reveal the inner mind/"work"ings of a true (compassionate), serious, experienced therapist. "Sotto voce" ("literally 'under voice' in Italian") portrays, softly, gently, perhaps in part indirectly, and certainly wisely the essential situation of Analysis or Therapy in general. It speaks directly from the under-commercialized and understated strength and voice of an anonymous, gentle but firm therapist to the under-acknowledged (and Unconscious but disquieting) voices a client might rapidly encounter when a program of therapy or analysis begins. "Shelter Angel" reveals the deep concern a wary, if not weary*, therapist feels for a presumably young, vulnerable, probably female, likely reckless, high risk client who seems to be a reminder of another client treated years earlier, one who may or may not have survived the perilous road the present client (to whom the poem's wisdom/warning is addressed) seems to be approaching or flirting with.
Sotto Voce
After the formal meeting ends
The private conversations start,
The combined voices sound like breaking waves
Laughter rippling out at the waves’ peak
Gradually subsiding until the room is empty
As the beach at dawn. A phrase floated out
As if cast ashore by the largest wave:
Some way of knowing. Of course we think
There is no way, especially if it’s put that way.
Shelter Angel
I agree that fallen angels
exert a certain charm
Taste once as guest
the unforgettable funky must
of a public shelter on the street
and you’ll watch your step
and carefully avoid
falling again into that
bottomless pit
and the fathomless exoticism
of square one
I do not know which of the two poets, Nick Piombino or Stephanie Young, accounts for either of the poems' various lines. And although I know well that Nick Piombino is a mental health care practitioner (therapist/analyst) of many years, I cannot and won't simply assume these poems primarily represent either poet's individual minds and experiences exclusively (although I believe that "Sotto Voce" is, given that these are from Stephanie Young's Postcard poems series, Nick Piombino's poem and that "Shelter Angel" is Stephanie Young's). What I believe that I do know is that these poems unmistakably represent the inner mind/workings of an experienced, compassionate, wise analyst. (Perhaps this is the main difference between these two very authentic poems and others that more typically treat such subject matter from a phony outsider's p.o.v. that usually ridicules therapy in general or clients and therapists in particular.)
Therapy**/Analysis***, frequently urged by quite immediate Crisis, generally begins, as in the first poem "Sotto Voce," with a "formal meeting" between therapist and client, and this kind of meeting is always, generally, a "private" meeting in the sense that the two participants, to some degree and surely at the beginning session(s) just playing formal "roles," talk together alone by themselves and of course in confidence. "The private conversations" (the second line) that start once the client leaves the formal meeting, however, are "private" in a very different, and sotto voce, manner. They are private in the sense that even the client is not, and has not been, privy to their content and import, not for a long, long time, anyways, and they would be taking place far outside the therapist's office and deep inside the client's Unconscious and burgeoning awareness, in other words, in the exceptionally private interstices of the client's now newly ruptured psyche; this is a very different "private" meeting of minds, and it presages the other "private" encounters that the client will later have with "transference" images/voices of the therapist, whence the client will further confuse formal meetings with private ones.
These "combined voices" may quickly swallow up the client in a sea of terror; these are voices about as subtle as a ten foot tall, 30 ton wave of salt water crashing into the client's sense of security and emotional well-being. The "Laughter rippling out at the waves' peak" I can only imagine to be a frightening and shocking cackle of madness descending on the client's mind's ear. Sure, just as suddenly as it introduces itself into the client's psychic life, there is the feeling that it is "Gradually subsiding," yes, but only to leave the client feeling as if "the room" that "is empty / As the beach at dawn" was formerly his or her psyche, now totally decimated, desolate, devastated, emptied. The phrase "Some way of knowing" now "floated out / As if cast ashore by the largest wave" may be the client's last defense, OR a life preserver; the client must surely feel an overwhelming urge "to know" what to do, how to think, where to go, NOW. The therapist in the poem warns against believing everything is hopeless, "Of course we think / There is no way, especially if it's put that way," but well understands that what is required now, on the part of both client and therapist at this moment, is a kind of leap of faith, too, for there will not be any easy "way" now; all the old ways have been smashed into a wreck not unlike that which Adrienne Rich**** experiences, witnesses, dissects, :
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
There, again, a way, must be found, or made, but it will take time, to say the least.
I can easily picture the second therapy situation, "Shelter Angel," as follows: Of course I may be completely wrong, but here's what I see. A young-ish woman whom the therapist/analyst knows from a few previous but half-hearted visits has recently approached the precipice of much more serious self-destruction and potential tragedy. She now requires a really sure-fire intervention that convinces her to truly put a firm check on her lifestyle habits and risky behaviors (perhaps she is toying with the possibility of becoming a prostitute in order to maintain a drug habit or perhaps she is playing an extremely dangerous game of Rescuer to a criminal who will likely take her into the Criminal Defense System with him if she gives in to continuing her relationship with him). Well, she is a problematically seductive young woman, also, and the therapist has picked up on that before, AND he understands that for the time being, her "seductiveness" is one of her strengths as well as one of her pitfalls. He feels that it is best to reinforce that seductiveness ever so Unconsciously and "safely" while at the same time, he stealthily works to disengage it from her battery of defense mechanisms, so he grants her a few careful "strokes" for her "certain charm" and for the romance associated with being something of a femme fatale, this young-ish woman about two steps from becoming a "fallen angel."
The speaker/therapist has known at least one fallen angel who has gone DOWN this perilous path before, if only as a "guest," a temporary visitor who apparently did return from the "public shelter on the street" in time to avoid becoming a permanent resident in that psycho-social, economic-spiritual death spiral. This previous "public shelter" "guest" taught a very hard lesson, that the path down the road to that "public shelter on the street" leads to a "bottomless pit" and, however romantic and "exotic" it seems, a "square one" of (debased and basic) existence, or self-annihilation that forces stranded souls to struggle there against existential disintegration they may never recover from or escape.
What I like about both of these poems is the fact that the perspective feels informed by real, or reality-based, dis-romanticized authenticity and the "argument" or import of the "message" in each is aimed at others human and needful, not readers of poetry or reviewers of books. The "experience," passion, and commitment of REAL therapists/analysts is conveyed. This is NOT a toy-reality of "images" of psychological sophistication or images of the world of psychoanalytical literary games quietists play, put out there to draw the attention of, say, fancy-talking psychoanalytic critics or theorists, bozo-roolooes doing their doctorates in Lacanian lit crit, say. Rather, this is the unmistakable register of true, compassionate regard for vulnerable, sensitive others, and that regard has been conveyed, or maybe simply "shared," with remarkably compelling poetic texture.
* Nick Piombino, a practicing psychotherapist/analyst, began his career as a social worker, I believe, hence worked with a much more vulnerable and high risk population, I surmise.
** Middle and upper-middle class term.
*** Old-fashioned, upper class term.
**** I'm not overwhelmingly fond of Adrienne Rich, though she is one of our most pioneering feminists, surely, and although I am well aware that some very good and reliable and exceptionally honorable others are; for me, she is too dour, but I should not be wasting anybody's time, not even my own, mentioning this, except mentioning such things as this are part of "close/closet reading," so I am loath to keep it to myself. Or that once upon a time I observed her read at Sonoma State University. That evening, the weather was stormy, wet, "depressing." Well, she and her poetry reading that evening struck me as being more depressing, profoundly depressing, in fact. There was "a despair" about her that I could hardly reconcile with the fact that (1)she was one of the most famous and successful poets in the country and that (2)this was the late 1980s, so what excuse did anyone with her means have parading around Life with such downer spirit; there were plenty of excellent "therapies" around that surely she could avail of, whereas most of us eternally poor and invisible graduate school mensches couldn't even afford a visit to the dentist. What was wrong with her not being at least a bit more balanced in her comportment? I don't know. Maybe she had recently gotten very, very bad news, the death of a friend, a sickness in her family, something reasonably and understandably saddening. But I tended then, and still today tend, to feel a bit disappointed in "poets" like Adrienne Rich. I believe that at a certain age, and with a certain income level, folks should develop a more balanced outlook on life and a more encouraging spirit, so I tended not, thus, to "trust her," as a poet, person, thinker, other, and I still don't, to some degree. Apologies to the very, very trustworthy other poets who rightly laud Rich for her "courage" at Modern American Poetry. I respect them AND Ms. Rich, too. At the same time, I think that whereas she is one of the world's most esteemed "feminist poets," she is NOT necessarily THE most inspiring feminist woman, poet, or anything else to this reader.
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