POETRY MONDAY
Richard Berlin
Although Richard Berlin is a psychiatrist in private practice in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the author of many scientific papers, I know him as a poet – and a fine one, at that. I first encountered his work when he read from his newly published chapbook of poems, Code Blue, at a local bookstore some years ago. There were other poets reading, but his poems stood out for their honesty, direct language and subject matter that was rarely dealt with in poetry. We are still lacking, to a large degree, poetry from the world of work, and here was someone who was writing it out of necessity and urgency.
Since then, Berlin has gone on to publish a full-length collection, How JFK Killed My Father, which was published by Pearl Editions and won the Pearl Poetry Prize.
His most recent book is not his own poetry but a collection of essays by other poets, Poets on Prozac (Johns Hopkins University Press), which, despite its pop title, is a serious look of the effect of mental illness and treatment on the creative process.
Here, by Richard Berlin, are two new, unpublished poems, “Freud” and “While Talking to a Psychoanalyst at a Party” and a third, “What a Psychiatrist Remembers,” which received a Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
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