I read Jung once while falling asleep in the cold dawn

[Brownlie]

I read Jung once while falling asleep in the cold dawn

It has been a long time since I've read anything about Jung, but I know that they use his archetypes in myths, he had that idea about the collective unconscious and the persona (I had to look on Wikipedia to remember the persona part, but the idea of trying to unify individuality with a whole was part of Whitman's poetry). it seems to be similar to the id, ego, and superego concept of Freud of course the shadow is not necessarily based on primal instinct. You've also got the pronunciation Yoong which opens the topic up for puns.


My shadow doesn’t need to write things down. Her head
is not a rising tide or a baseball stadium full of drunks. I can’t
keep a grocery list in mine for more than five minutes

especially not when comparing prices bleached out rows of leeks and oranges
or trying to remember the names of white flowers now peeking through the branches.
This is a point of contention at home where my other half, the human half -- Maybe a comma here

and not my shadow, doesn’t realize what he’s missing. Or not missing.- "or not missing" sounds like a fragment. You may want to check up on it.

My shadow only saunters into the kitchen for tea and knows the weight
of a menu better than a chef’s knife. Other knifes are another story.
She doesn’t need to write lists, plans, praises, laments. They come to her -- The listing here is ironic.
bidden, a pack of wagging dogs:
easily called up and dismissed. I would call them poems -- Maybe a comma here

but she calls them talk, the talk we all do when waiting or when
the train lows like a beast, some great sad beast, -- Maybe a comma before or
perhaps one that has not walked this earth for millions of years.
She doesn’t think of millions of years or even of yesterday.
This makes conversation difficult.

Her gray hair gets longer and longer but never
appears to tangle or break, even when my whole body has become a tangle
of muscle and reed, a tangle of a million limbs in bed or in the rush
to get on and off the subway. Her turquoise nails draw
animal figures in the air. She is shades away from becoming

an animal, from breaking into storm.

At a gathering of gods from places long forgotten she is carrying trays
and bundling white tulips and long grass to give to the leaving, those leaving down
the long and sun-baked steps. -- long is somewhat boring you may want to describe the steps better with more exact language

My shadow pretends she does not need connection to the divine
to the round faces carved thousands of years ago in stone,
but only to the beastly clouds tracking across the sky, in the grass. -- I like this line if it refers to Whitman, either way it's a good usage of a parenthetical comma.
She prays beneath the statues and the stained glass. -- Prays seems to be a pun

I have seen her at this, my shadow wearing a robe of red light. -- This is some sort of Jungian moment of discovery. Maybe some sort of spiritual experience.

Very cool stuff here though it's been awhile since I've looked at anything with Jung. It seems that if you're doing some sort of mythological analysis of something you can apply Jung to a criticism about most literature. That being said, there's probably a lot out there on Jung though I'm not sure if he is used explicitly in any poems, but I suppose that's besides the point really. I think this poem can be made much stronger if you clean up some of the more generalized language such as the word "long." Here's what I liked: the part about the flowers, what I perceived as interesting puns, and an attempt at a relatively high concept. You may want to see which words are not working strongly and replace or eliminate them. Well, maybe there's something here you can use. If you explain what you're trying to accomplish I may be able to help you more. Of course, some would argue that would hinder the workshop process. Thanks for posting, you have some promising material.