'The music of what happens' in poetry and psychoanalysis

The author presents a close reading of a Frost poem and a detailed discussi on of an analytic session. Using specific examples from the poem and from t he analytic session, he then offers some thoughts concerning the relationsh ip between the way he listens to the language of the poem and the way he an d his patient speak with and listen to one another. The author illustrates in this reading of the poem and in the way he speaks to his patient that he is not primarily engaged in an effort to unearth what lies 'behind' the po em's word; and symbols or 'beneath' the patient's report of a dream or of a life event. Instead (or perhaps more accurately, tit addition), he attempt s to listen to the sound and feel of 'what's going on', to the 'music of wh at happens'. This is achieved to a significant degree in the analytic setti ng by means of the analyst's attending to his own reverie experience.