POEMS ABOUT MY PSYCHIATRIST IBD

Sinopsis

âÇÖThe worldâÇÖs really not the way it is,âÇÖ says the eponymous Psychiatrist in Andrzej KotaÅäskiâÇÖs wildly popularáPoems about my Psychiatrist, âÇÖitâÇÖs not what it seems to us to be / to tell the truth / the world doesnâÇÖt actually exist.âÇÖ This is problematical, to say the least. The world doesnâÇÖt exist? Well, here I am, and here is this book, real paper, which I hold in my real hands. If youâÇÖre confused, donâÇÖt expect much help to come from the book itself. Do we have two narrators here, or one? Is there a patient and a psychiatrist in conversation, or is the psychiatrist merely a projection of the patientâÇÖs own mind, a cry for help incarnate, from a person unable to deal with life?As ambiguity is at the heart of great literature, this is not a bad thing: it gives us, as readers, something to argue about, an elusive answer to chase down over successive, ever closer readings of a book made up of deceptively straightforward, lucid verses. The bigger problem is the staggering popularity ofáPoems about my Psychiatrist, recently reprinted in an anniversary edition that contains new poems added to the original cycle. KotaÅäskiâÇÖs work is a bestseller in Poland - a status of which few, if any, collections of poetry may boast. To what does it owe its popularity? KotaÅäskiâÇÖs incisive, bare-bones approach to poetry, which savours of the best compositions of Tadeusz Różewicz and Zbigniew Herbert, presents to us an unnamed anti-hero.Unlike RóżewiczâÇÖs disillusioned soldier returning from the war, and HerbertâÇÖsáPan Cogitoá- that indefatigable defender of Mediterranean culture and human dignity in the face of totalitarianism - KotaÅäskiâÇÖs anti-hero is a neurotic sort, a jumble of complexes, who can be best compared to the twitchy protagonists of Woody AllenâÇÖs films. If we, as readers, identify with him, what does this say about ourselves, and our culture, now in the third decade of the twenty-first century? Here, reader, in the English translation of Charles S. Kraszewski, we present you with a mirror. Open your eyes, if you dare.