Dahlen's psychoanalytic reading of 'A Reading'

In Natomas, on a day in 1983, Beverly Dahlen read one of the poems in her epic A Reading, and then, remarkably, offered a close psychoanalytic reading of the poem that lasted an hour and twenty minutes. She describes it as “a self-analysis of a piece of writing,” which she wrote first for herself but then felt willing to share the notes. “The framework for this is psychoanalytic. I'm assuming a kind of psychoanalytic stance toward what's going on.” The notes had been composed in 1981.