Freud by Other Means: Poems

"Gene Frumkin's Freud by Other Means is an extraordinary collection, mining a core where language and silence meet and, through their interchange, interrogate psychological complexities of what it means to be human, embodied, yet simultaneously divine. These truly brilliant poems disclose a consciousness certain of the transformative power of language, a language at once rugged and tender in its explorations of the connective tissue of body, mind, and spirit. Central to these poems is a sensuality of phrase that Frumkin always makes inviting, delicious, tenderly available even in its most rigorous demand that the reader abandon the known world of the mind for a less known, richer, more generative poetic moment of critical reflection and associative reach. For decades Frumkin has cut his own superb poetic path, and Freud by Other Means continues and augments the achievements of this major American voice. I want to call him a 'treasure,' and I will, since this book, like his others, is a storehouse where each poem is a jewel that, when turned in the light of the reader's consciousness, reveals an immensity of being for which we can all be grateful."--George Kalamaras