Motive for Metaphor

<p>This book is a small anthology: each chapter a kind of meditation-on poetry and psychoanalysis; on a poem sometimes two; on poetry in general; on thought itself. The poems are beautiful some are contemporary some are classical and well worth a reader's attention. The motive for metaphor is the title of a short poem of Wallace Stevens in which he says he is happy with the subtleties of experience. He likes what he calls the half colours of quarter things as opposed to the certainties the hard primary reds and blues. To grasp and make sense of what is elusive (and beautiful) that is for the essential and puzzling condition of poetry we are obliged to make metaphors. The same is perhaps true of psychoanalysis-this is the essential argument of the book. The chapters were originally poetry columns that the author wrote for Psychologist-Psychoanalyst and Division/Review (both journals of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association). </p>