Judy Rowe Michaels

The happy poet you see pictured here, hygge (cozy), as the Danes would say, with a cat on her lap absorbed in a book of poems from WordTech Editions, is a founding member of the poetry critique and performance group, “Cool Women” and a poet for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation in New Jersey. A six-time cancer survivor, she also gives talks on ovarian cancer for “Survivors Teaching Students,” a program in over one hundred medical schools throughout the United States.

Betty Lies

Zara Raab

Happy New Year, everyone!  Well, it seems as if we’ve survived 2016  — and what a year it was.

Now, back to poetry, which is one of the things that helps us stay alive and human.

You must think so, too, or you wouldn’t be reading this page. Our poet today is someone whose sophisticated and mature work I had the pleasure of discovering only recently.  Zara Raab grew up in northern California, where her
grandparents’ grandparents settled in the 19^th century.  Settled now in western Massachusetts, she works on-line in media communications and is putting together two new books, leading workshops in formal aspects of poetry and helping out at MassPoetry.

Salman Akhtar

Good morning, and Happy New Year, everyone—the first day of 2018, after a tumultuous 2017.

In times like these, or at any time, it’s refreshing to read poetry, and I’m happy to say that our poet this morning is someone we’re honored to have on our pages, Salman Akhtar, who has contributed so much to our understanding of both poetry and psychoanalysis.

Dr. Akhtar, who comes from a family of renowned poets and writers in India, is himself the author of eleven poetry collections. I first encountered his work in a volume he edited called Between Hours: A Collection of Poems by Psychoanalysts (Karnac Books, 2012) and was struck by his poem in that book, “Summary.” With his permission, I was proud to include it in an anthology I edited, Climate of Opinion: Sigmund Freud in Poetry (IP Books, 2017).

Six of his eleven collections, The Hidden Knot (1985), Conditions (1993), Turned to Light (1998), After Landing (2014), Blood and Ink (2016), and Freshness of the Child (2018) contain his poems in the English language; the other five are in his native Urdu. He is also a prolific contributor to the psychoanalytic literature, having authored or edited eighty-nine books. For his distinguished contributions to psychoanalysis, he received the prestigious Sigourney Award in 2012.
A psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and teacher by profession, Dr. Akhtar has been a Visiting Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and currently is Professor of Psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Supervising and Training Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia and (probably of the greatest interest to poets) a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theater Company in Philadelphia.

We hope you will enjoy the following three poems by Salman Akhtar: “The Limit
of Instruction,” “A Wish,” and, reprinted here from Between Hours, “Summary.” In times like these, the third one is particularly instructive.

–Irene Willis
                                                 Poetry Editor

THE LIMIT OF INSTRUCTION

To our readers:

Our Poetry Editor, Irene Willis, has had to take a bereavement leave this month, but she will be back with a new Poetry Monday in December.

Meanwhile, she wants to remind you to send your submissions, whether for Poetry Monday or for the forthcoming anthology, Climate of Opinion: Sigmund Freud in Poetry, by postal mail, to:

Irene Willis, Poetry Editor
International Psychoanalysis
P.O. Box 217
South Egremont, MA 01258