David St. John :: essays research papers fc

The black market of David St. John David St. John writes of love in a pessimistic elan in his collection of poems, The Red Leaves of Night. His writings suggest love is unattainable and his relationships with people (especially with females) are portrayed as negative. St. John creates a fall man in his text, especially when his poems focus on his dilemmas with women. Psychoanalysis plays a large role in the writings of St. John being that he shows the effects of his downfall and the negativity the downfall incorporates. La stoogeian psychoanalysis suggests our expression is unified like our subconscious and full of desires. Lacanian analysis also shows that the signs in language are split between the signifier and the signified and the barrier between the two lead to unrealised desires. St. Johns poetry is swarming with lines alluding to unfulfilled desires or a longing for things that simply cannot be obtained. St. John establishes the recess of a psyche and through Lacanian analysis we can see that the desires evince in his poetry will never be met. Through Lacanian analysis, we are able to see that St. John is seeking more, and wanting more philia out of relationships and his life that cannot be obtained. St. John is longing for a backbone completeness yet his completion is something that can never happen. Lacan shows the human psyche in three fates, similar to that of Sigmund Freud. Lacan calls the three parts Orders and they consist of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. The Imaginary is the part of the psyche that contains our wishes, fantasies, and, most importantly, images (Bressler 156). Lacans major focus is in his possible action that our psyche is lack and fragmentation. We have longings for love, for physical pleasureKbut nothing can fulfill our desire to return to the Imaginary Order and be at one with our mother (Bressler 158). Many of the poems in The Red Leaves of Night deduct the sense that St. John is yearning for somethin g and is never complete. For example, in his poem The Unsayable, the unknowable & You St. John presents a situation where he is completely captivated by a woman and lusts for more activity with her. My prize A nighttime alone (again) with you,tracing/This brocade of sweat along your amber shoulder./Lets weave together the dawns superior light-/A hired man of bodies, inscribed by the summers night (St.