from Knots by R. D. Laing

from Knots
R. D. Laing

1

They are playing a game. They are playing at not
playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I
shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.

They are not having fun.
I can’t have fun if they don’t.
If I get them to have fun, then I can have fun with them.
Getting them to have fun, is not fun. It is hard work.
I might get fun out of finding out why they’re not
I’m not supposed to get fun out of working out why
they’re not.
But there is even some fun in pretending to them I’m not having fun finding out why they’re not.

A little girl comes along and says: let’s have fun.
But having fun is a waste of time, because it doesn’t
help to figure out why they’re not having fun.

How dare you have fun when Christ died on the Cross
for you! Was He having fun?

It is our duty to bring up our children to love,
honour and obey us.
If they don’t, they must be punished,
otherwise we would not be doing our duty.

If they grow up to love, honour and obey us
we have been blessed for bringing them up properly.

If they grow up not to love, honour and obey us
either we have brought them up properly
        or we have not:
if we have
there must be something the matter with them;
if we have not
there is something the matter with us.

SELECTED BY ANNELYSE GELMAN

I’m sharing an excerpt from R.D. Laing’s 1970 book Knots. As you’ll see, the poems are little puzzle boxes exhaustively exploring the psychological “knots” into which we unwittingly tie ourselves, both internally and relationally—“knots” being these seemingly intractable, self-reinforcing patterns of negotiation rooted in both fear and desire.

I discovered this book in my late father’s library as a teenager and have always wished more people would read it: It points to the kinds of mutual understanding that I believe are a prerequisite to healing the broken communication patterns that underlie so much of the conflict I see in the world, applicable at scales both small and large.

The poems are also remarkable for having almost nothing in common with most of the poetry I love—they contain few to no images or sensory details, no epiphanies, no lyricism, no associative leaps, no imagination; their music and genius is in plainly untangling the human condition and laying it bare. Some of them are quite exhaustive and devolve into feedback loops:

“Jill feels guilty / that Jack feels guilty / that Jill feels guilty / that Jack feels guilty.”

And some of them precisely pinpoint a tension:

“Jack: Forgive me. / Jill: No. / Jack: I’ll never forgive you for not forgiving me.”

If you’ve ever felt unhappy that you couldn’t make someone else happy, wanted what you couldn’t have or not wanted what you did have, or had the same argument over and over with a parent, friend, or partner, this book is for you.

R.D. Laing was a Scottish psychiatrist deeply critical and skeptical of psychiatry, and I hope you enjoy these poems and get as much out of them as I have.

With gratitude to T. de los Reyes, who has run the Read a Little Poetry project—for many years in total anonymity—with a level of passion, integrity, vulnerability, and dedication that should inspire all of us. Thank you, T.!

ABOUT ANNELYSE GELMAN

Annelyse Gelman is the author, most recently, of Vexations (University of Chicago Press, 2023), which received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and was longlisted for the National Book Award. She is also the founder and director of Midst (midst.press, @midstpoetry)—a platform showcasing the writing processes of contemporary poets—and the author of Everyone I Love Is a Stranger to Someone (Write Bloody, 2013), a collection of poems; the experimental pop EP About Repulsion (Fonograf Editions, 2019); and the handmade artist’s book POOL (NECK, 2020).