On Hysteria

<p><em>On Hysteria</em> Nancy Kuhl's fourth collection of poems is a lyric engagement of voice memory longing and the fraught ways we speak ourselves. In conversation - and sometimes conflict - with Sigmund Freud's foundational text of psychoanalysis <em>Studies on Hysteria</em> (1895) Kuhl reframes the discourse surrounding cases of so-called hysterical girls and women expanding and shifting given narratives. With intensity and emotion <em>On Hysteria </em>examines how ideas may be converted into physical symptoms thought collapsed into sensation articulation fused with forceful action. Above all Kuhl's poems consider ways suffering itself becomes unbounded expression: Her pain is a voice / pulled by handfuls / from the throat.</p><p><br></p>