Sadness And Happiness

Poems by Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780691013220
  9780691062952
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691219509
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

From Sadness and Happiness: Poems by Robert Pinsky:
CEREMONY FOR ANY BEGINNING


Robert Pinsky


Against weather, and the random
Harpies--mood, circumstance, the laws
Of biography, chance, physics--
The unseasonable soul holds forth,
Eager for form as a renowned
Pedant, the emperor's man of worth,
Hereditary arbiter of manners.


Soul, one's life is one's enemy.
As the small children learn, what happens
Takes over, and what you were goes away.
They learn it in sardonic soft
Comments of the weather, when it sharpens
The hard surfaces of daylight: light
Winds, vague in direction, like blades


Lavishing their brilliant strokes
All over a wrecked house,
The nude wallpaper and the brute
Intelligence of the torn pipes.
Therefore when you marry or build
Pray to be untrue to the plain
Dominance of your own weather, how it keeps


Going even in the woods when not
A soul is there, and how it implies
Always that separate, cold
Splendidness, uncouth and unkind--
On chilly, unclouded mornings,
Torrential sunlight and moist air,
Leafage and solid bark breathing the mist.

V. Essay On Psychiatrists

Essay On Psychiatrists

I.Invocation

It’s crazy to think one could describe them—

Calling on reason, fantasy, memory, eyes and ears—

As though they were all alike any more

Than sweeps, opticians, poets or masseurs.

Moreover, they are for more than one reason

Difficult to speak of seriously and freely,

And I have never (even this is difficult to say

Plainly, without foolishness or irony)

Consulted one for professional help, though it happens

Many or most of my friends have—and that,

Perhaps, is why it seems urgent to try to speak

Sensibly about them, about the psychiatrists.

II.Some Terms

“Shrink” is a misnomer. The religious

Analogy is all wrong, too, and the old,

Half-forgotten jokes about Viennese accents

And beards hardly apply to the good-looking woman

In boots and a knit dress, or the man

Seen buying the Sunday Times in mutton-chop

Whiskers and expensive jogging shoes.

In a way I suspect that even the terms “doctor”

And “therapist” are misnomers; the patient

Is not necessarily “sick.” And one assumes

That no small part of the psychiatrist’s

Role is just that: to point out misnomers.

III.Proposition

These are the first citizens of contingency.

Far from the doctrinaire past of the old ones,

They think in their prudent meditations

Not about ecstasy (the soul leaving the body)

Nor enthusiasm (the god entering one’s person)

Nor even about sanity (which means

Health, an impossible perfection)

But ponder instead relative truth and the warm

Dusk of amelioration. The cautious

Young augurs with their family-life, good books

And records and foreign cars believe

In amelioration—in that, and in suffering.

IV.A Lakeside Identification

Yes, crazy to suppose one could describe them—

And yet, there was this incident: at the local beach

Clouds of professors and the husbands of professors

Swam, dabbled or stood to talk with arms folded

Gazing at the lake . . . and one of the few townsfolk there,

With no faculty status—a matter-of-fact, competent,

Catholic woman of twenty-seven with five children

And a first-rate body—pointed her finger

At the back of one certain man and asked me,

“Is that guy a psychiatrist?” and by god he was! “Yes,”

She said, “He looks like a psychiatrist.”

Grown quiet, I looked at his pink back, and thought.

V.Physical Comparison With Professors And Others

Pink and a bit soft-bodied, with a somewhat jazzy

Middle-class bathing suit and sandy sideburns, to me

He looked from the back like one more professor.

And from the front, too—the boyish, unformed carriage

Which foreigners always note in American men, combined

As in a professor with that liberal, quizzical,

Articulate gaze so unlike the more focused, more

Tolerant expression worn by a man of action (surgeon,

Salesman, athlete). On closer inspection was there,

Perhaps, a self-satisfied or benign air, a studied

Gentleness toward the child whose hand he held loosely?

Absurd to speculate; but then—the woman saw something.

VI.Their Seriousness, With Further Comparisons

In a certain sense, they are not serious.

That is, they are serious—useful, deeply helpful,

Concerned—only in the way that the pilots of huge

Planes, radiologists, and master mechanics can,

At their best, be serious. But however profound

The psychiatrists may be, they are not serious the way

A painter may be serious beyond pictures, or a businessman

May be serious beyond property and cash—or even

The way scholars and surgeons are serious, each rapt

In his work’s final cause, contingent upon nothing:

Beyond work; persons; recoveries. And this is fitting:

Who would want to fly with a pilot who was serious

About getting to the destination safely? Terrifying idea—

That a pilot could over-extend, perhaps try to fly

Too well, or suffer from Pilot’s Block; of course,

It may be that (just as they must not drink liquor

Before a flight) they undergo regular, required check-ups

With a psychiatrist, to prevent such things from happening.

VII.Historical (The Bacchae)

Madness itself, as an idea, leaves us confused—

Incredulous that it exists, or cruelly facetious,

Or stricken with a superstitious awe as if bound

By the lost cults of Trebizond and Pergamum . . .

The most profound study of madness is found

In the Bacchae of Euripides, so deeply disturbing

That in Cambridge, Massachusetts the players

Evaded some of the strongest unsettling material

By portraying poor sincere, fuddled, decent Pentheus

As a sort of fascistic bureaucrat—but it is Dionysus

Who holds rallies, instills ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• I. The Time Of Year, The Time Of Day
• II. Sadness And Happiness
• III. Persons
• IV. The Street Of Furthest Memory
• V. Essay On Psychiatrists