Psychoanalytic Poems

Bitch

by Carolyn Kizer

Now, when he and I meet, after all these years,

I say to the bitch inside me, don’t start growling.   (SUPEREGO)

He isn’t a trespasser anymore,

Just an old acquaintance tipping his hat.

My voice says, “Nice to see you,” (SUPEREGO)

As the bitch starts to bark hysterically. (ID)

He isn’t an enemy now,

Where are your manners, I say, as I say, (EGO)

“How are the children? They must be growing up.”   

At a kind word from him, a look like the old days,   (SUPEREGO)

The bitch changes her tone; she begins to whimper.   

She wants to snuggle up to him, to cringe.

Down, girl! Keep your distance

Or I’ll give you a taste of the choke-chain.

“Fine, I’m just fine,” I tell him.

She slobbers and grovels.

After all, I am her mistress. She is basically loyal.   

It’s just that she remembers how she came running   

Each evening, when she heard his step;

How she lay at his feet and looked up adoringly   

Though he was absorbed in his paper;

Or, bored with her devotion, ordered her to the kitchen   

Until he was ready to play.

But the small careless kindnesses

When he’d had a good day, or a couple of drinks,

Come back to her now, seem more important

Than the casual cruelties, the ultimate dismissal.

“It’s nice to know you are doing so well,” I say. (SUPEREGO)

He couldn’t have taken you with him;

You were too demonstrative, too clumsy,

Not like the well-groomed pets of his new friends.   

“Give my regards to your wife,” I say. You gag

As I drag you off by the scruff,

Saying, “Goodbye! Goodbye! Nice to have seen you again.”

The Id, Ego, and Superego are clear in this poem because she is at war with herself, but expresses both sides during this poem.  You can see how she has primal instincts when her guard is up and “As the bitch starts to bark hysterically” after she says something nice shows that the Id inside of her does not necessarily want to be friendly.  The Id is her natural instincts of that when a dog does not understand why you are there, it starts to bark, and that is what she wanted to do.  Her Ego is displayed when she says “Where are your manners, I say, as I say” because consciously she knows that she has to be nice, and balance her feelings.  “At a kind word from him, a look like the old days,/ The bitch changes her tone; she begins to whimper./ She wants to snuggle up to him, to cringe” is the superego because she wants so badly to do this, but she can’t.

The message that this poem sends is that there are different parts of yourself that need to be constantly put into check and that you need to be aware of.  It shows there is an inner battle in everyone and that there are different parts of your personality that need to constantly be addressed.

From a Correct Address in a Suburb of a Major City

By Helen Sorrels (1908)

She wears her middle age like a cowled  (SUPEREGO)

Gown, sleeved in it, folded high

At the breast

Charming, proper at cocktails  (EGO)

But the inner one raging  (ID/ EGO)

And how to hide her

How to keep her leashed, contain (EGO)

The heat of her, the soaring cry

Never yet loosed,

Demanding a chance before the years devour her,

Before the marrow of her fine long legs

Congeals and she

Settles forever for this street, this house,

Her face set to the world

Sweet, sweet

Above the shocked, astonished

hunger

Hate Poem


By Julie Sheehan

I hate you truly. Truly I do.


Everything about me hates everything about you.


The flick of my wrist hates you.


The way I hold my pencil hates you.


The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped in the
  

jaws of a moray eel hates you.


Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you.

Look out! Fore! I hate you.

The blue-green speck of sock lint I’m trying to dig from
  

  under my third toenail, left foot, hates you.


The history of this keychain hates you.


My sigh in the background as you pick out the cashews hates you.


The goldfish of my genius hates you.


My aorta hates you. Also, my ancestors.

A closed window is both a closed window and an obvious


symbol of how I hate you.

My voice curt as a hairshirt: Hate.


My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: Hate.


My pleasant “good morning”: Hate.
  (EGO)

You know how when I’m sleepy I nuzzle my head under your
 arm? Hate.


The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate.

My wit practices it.


My breasts relaxing in their holster from morning to night hate you.


Layers of hate, a parfait.


Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate,


I dissect you cell by cell,

so that I might hate each one
   

individually and at leisure.


My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity of
 my hate,

which can never have enough of you,


Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine.

Almost the whole poem seems like an Id poem, she doesn’t seem to be holding anything back.