A Performance of Forces: A Combat Veteran, a Poet, and a Psychotherapist in “Narratives Interrupted”

ABSTRACT

This essay in “Notes from Field” illustrates the use of poetry therapy through a narrative lens into the inner world of a combat veteran. Through a poem written by a military veteran, a psychotherapist interrupts the poem with alternative possibilities as a means of narrative reconstruction with the client. Poetry, after all, befuddles the reader, not to mention the poet, with poetic devices: multiple-layered metaphor, altered cadences, vague allusions, and grand illusion. The reader is left with the question of what lies ahead of the therapist facing a poem-narrative and a combat veteran client struggling for meaning and hope post war.

KEYWORDS:

• Poetry and veterans
• narratives and combat veterans
• psychotherapy with veterans
• military veterans
• war poetry