Insouciant, serious, funny and profound, Climate of Opinion: Sigmund Freud in Poetry is the book to keep by your couch. This panoply of poems unfolds like an analytic session, from family dynamics through personal antics, to the frustrating, delicately calibrated patient-therapist exchange. Savvy anthologist Irene Willis invites everyone to Freud's poetry party, from H.D. and Anna Freud to W.H. Auden and Philip Larkin. Willis calls on the next generation of poets, too, from James Cummins and Lynn Emanuel to Louise Gluck, with a brilliant finale by David Lehman--just like the surprise insight at the end of a forty-five minute hour. Climate of Opinion proves that psychic play is more than matched by the poetic imagination.
Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst: Poems.
From the Introduction by Irene Willis:
This book grew organically. I read poetry all the time B old books, new books, literary journals B and sometime last year began to notice that many poems mentioned Freud by name. Poetry had always reflected Freudian concepts, of course, but suddenly poets seemed to be more conscious of them. Was Freud having, as they say, "a moment" again? Perhaps. At lunch one day with a couple of psychoanalyst friends, I mentioned this and suggested casually B yes, really casually, just as a topic of conversation, B"Someone ought to do an anthology of poems that mention Freud."
One of the best parts, for me, of this project, was not only gathering the poems but the background reading I did while getting ready for the first harvest. In the process I acquired copies of many fascinating articles and a whole shelf of books about this man who, in my own thinking now, is more important than ever. More about that in the Afterword. As they often say in restaurants before you pick up your fork, "Enjoy!"