Naomi Ruth Lowinsky: Award-Winning Poet, Author, and Jungian analyst
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Your People Are My People
"Your People Are My People" tracks the ways music, meaningful to each culture, evokes the commonalities and differences in the experiences of European Jews and African Americans.
The poem will be published in the 2010-2011 New Millennium Writings, due out in one year, and at www.newmillenniumwritings.com.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Roland Hayes Article in Psychological Perspectives
This powerfully moving article remembers the story and charisma of Roland Hayes, the great and almost forgotten African American tenor. A classically trained musician, Hayes was as well known in his day as Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson, both of whom he mentored. Hayes introduced the beauty and joy of spirituals to concert audiences in Europe and America.
Roland Hayes touched the author’s life when she was a very young child. Her parents were faculty members at Black Mountain College. In mid 1940s North Carolina, her father committed what at that time was the revolutionary act of inviting Hayes to perform before an integrated audience. This memorable concert featured the son of freed slaves singing the European repertoire of Schubert and Bach and the African American folk tradition of spirituals.
Spirituals offer a religious attitude that intertwines African, Jewish and Christian roots with the practical function of conveying secret messages about the way to freedom— a peculiarly American blend of soul that has much in it to sustain us in difficult times.
Roland Hayes made a profound impression on the author. She invokes his spirit in this article and learns much about herself and about him.
Psychological Perspectives is a quarterly journal of Jungian thought published by the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles. Subscription information is available from http://www.junginla.org/psychpersp/.
Friday, October 23, 2009
A Day with Naomi Lowinsky and The Muse in Los Angeles
"A Day with Your Muse"
10am - 1pm, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2009
C.G. Jung Institute Los Angeles
"A Day with Your Muse" is a half-day event in which Naomi Lowinsky will present material from her book, and lead a writing workshop to help people get in touch with their inner "Sister from Below." Reserve your space now!
The "Sister from Below" is a fierce inner figure. She emerges out of reverie, dream, a fleeting memory, a difficult emotion—she is the moment of inspiration—the muse.
This Sister is not about the ordinary business of life: work, shopping, making dinner. She speaks from other realms. If you'll allow, She'll whisper in your ear, lead your thoughts astray, fill you with strange yearnings, get you hot and bothered, send you off on some wild goose chase of a daydream, eat up hours of your time. She's a siren, a seductress, a shape-shifter . . . Why listen to such a troublemaker? Because She is essential to the creative process: She holds the keys to the doors of our imaginations and deeper life—the evolution of Soul.
Naomi Lowinsky, MFT, is an analyst member of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and the poetry/fiction editor for Psychological Perspectives. She is the recent recipient of the Obama Millennium Poetry awarded for "Madelyn Dunham, Passing On.” Her most recent publication, The Sister From Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way (ISBN 9780981034423) has just been published by Fisher King Press. A reprinted edition of The Motherline: Every Woman's Journey to Find Her Female Roots (ISBN 9780981034461) has also just been published by Fisher King Press. She has had poetry published in many literary magazines and anthologies in addition to her two poetry collections, red clay is talking (2000) and crimes of the dreamer (2005). She has a private practice in Berkeley.
To reserve your space, contact the
C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles
10349 Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90064Phone: (310) 556-1193
email: office@junginla.org www.junginla.org
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Poetry reading at Nefeli Café in Berkeley
Naomi Ruth Lowinsky will be reading at Nefeli Café in Berkeley
Neighborhood: UC Campus Area
1854 Euclid Ave
(between Hearst Ave & Ridge Rd)
Berkeley, CA 94709
(510) 841-6374
“The Word Made Flesh: The Living Symbol - San Francisco Jung Institute
CONFERENCE:
The Living Symbol In and Out of the Consulting Room - Maria Chiaia, Naomi Lowinsky, Richard Stein, Bryan Wittine, Suzanne Wagner
Saturday and Sunday, October 10 & 11, 2009
9:30 am – 3:30 pm
Reserve for this event at San Francisco Jung Institute"Symbols act as transformers"
- C.G. Jung (CW Vol. 5: 232)
Living symbols are messages from the depths of our being to our conscious "I", messages that reveal mysterious things about ourselves and our lives. Psychotherapists across traditions have found that symbolic images open the way to the creative possibilities of the unconscious. We discover these images through free association, dreams, fantasies, creative productions, and within the relational field between analyst and analysand. They evoke fascination, awe, fear, joy, upset, disorientation, but are inevitably transformative when we approach them with respect and attend to them in a contemplative way.
In this conference five Jungian analysts with different approaches will speak to their experience of living, transforming symbols in their lives and clinical work. What does the living symbol look like in clinical practice and in life? How does the symbol enter our psyche, and what does it do once it becomes known? What are the spiritual implications of symbols? Through lectures that include theory, art, poetry, and clinical material, the speakers will offer their unique perspectives on the ways symbols guide processes of growth in and out of the consulting room.
The Word Made Flesh - Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
It is as if the poet could still sense, beneath the words of contemporary speech and in the images that crowd in upon his imagination, the ghostly presence of bygone spiritual worlds, and possessed the capacity to make them come alive again. As Gerhart Hauptmann says: "Poetry is the art of letting the primordial word resound through the common word." - Jung, (CW 5 p. 303)
Our medium, in analysis, is language: the spoken word. Like poets we seek the "primordial word." We are engaged in the Promethean art of bringing life, fire, libido back to our analysand's word: so the word is made flesh; the symbol comes to life; the God is renewed.
When a person stumbles into analysis, she is typically split off from the surge of her libido, cut off from the meaning of her words, severed from her authenticity and from her Gods. She is incarcerated in taboos and constrictions that block her feeling, steal her breath, smother her fire.
If the analysis goes well she will find her way back, through the circumambulations and meanderings of the analytic conversation, to her own primordial word. She and her analyst will create a private language, a personal Tarot deck of living symbols, born of their shared wanderings in her internal landscape: her Gods and demons, dreams, memories, wounds, and longings. This is the stuff of her soul. Together they come to know what moves her, what excites her, how her words become flesh. Perhaps she will find a creative form in which to manifest the power of her personal symbols.
I propose to tell the story of such an analysis, the one I know best – my own – and to reflect on how language and poetry expresses the living symbol: the word made flesh. A series of poems about my analytic experience will structure the talk.
Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, PhD, is an analyst member of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and a widely published poet. Her book on creativity, The Sister from Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way, has just been published by Fisher King Press. She has published a collection of poems about the analytic experience, crimes of the dreamer. She is the poetry editor of Psychological Perspectives, teaches writing classes in many settings, and is in private practice in Berkeley.
San Francisco Jung Institute Monthly Writing Group
Deep River: Writing as a Spiritual Practice - Naomi Lowinsky
Saturday October 17, 2009 and 7 Subsequent Second Saturdays
1 – 5 pm
I listened to the earth-talk
- Mary Oliver
Poetry of the natural world is a deep river in American literature. From Walt Whitman to Mary Oliver, American poets have heard the spirit of the earth and its creatures, have spoken for forest and mountain lake, gray whale and marsh hawk. threatened habitat and lost wetlands. Theirs is the prophetic function of giving voice to our fear and our grief. Theirs is the shamanic function of re-imagining our place in nature.
This coming year in the Deep River Writing Circle we will track our own relationship to the natural world. We will read Whitman, Oliver, Gary Snyder, W.S. Merwin, Patiann Rogers and others, and write under their influence.
The Deep River writing circle is a place to find your own voice, to develop your writing practice, to participate in a small community of writers, to study great poems, to make your own connection to the deep river of nature writing. New members welcome, space allowing. Our first meeting will be on Saturday, October 17th from 1-5 in the Institute Library. After that we will meet on second Saturdays, November 2009 through May 2010. Limited to 12 participants.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
What others are saying about Naomi and the Sister from Below
“Naomi Lowinsky has given us a remarkable, fearless, and full autobiography. Speaking in poetic, psychologically sensitive, scholarly dialogues with her shape-shifting muse, she has created a new form . . . This is a beautiful book to treasure and spread among worthy friends.”
—Sylvia Perera, Author of Descent to the Goddess and Celtic Queen Maeve and Addiction.
“. . . Naomi Ruth Lowinsky offers us a superbly detailed investigation of the powerful, mythic forces of the world as they are revealed to the active creative self. Don’t miss this enlightening and fascinating book.”—David St. John, Author of Study for the World’s Body: New and Selected Poems and Prism.
“Naomi’s poetry and prose is infused with the suffering and joys of humans everywhere. Insightful and deeply moving, she brings us the food and water of life.”—Joan Chodorow, Author of Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology, Editor of C.G. Jung on Active Imagination.
“A passionate love letter to those who yearn to be heard. A must read for every woman who longs to write poetry.”—Maureen Murdock, Author of The Heroine’s Journey and Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory.
“Naomi Ruth Lowinsky reinterprets mythic and historical reality in provocative versions of the stories of Eurydice, Helen, Ruth, Naomi, and Sappho. The voice of the Sister from Below argues, cajoles, prods, explains, and yes, loves her human counterpart, and becomes the inspiration for Lowinsky’s stunning poetry in this highly original book.”—Betty de Shong Meador, Author of Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart and Princess, Priestess, Poet.
—ISBN 978-0-9810344-2-3
Published by and available for purchase directly from Fisher King Press.
Also available from your local bookstore, and a host of on-line booksellers.
Publication Date: June 1st, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
A Day with Noami Lowinsky and The Muse
Presented by: Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at the
C.G. Jung Institute San Francisco
"A Day with Your Muse" is a day-long workshop in which Naomi Lowinsky will present material from her book, and lead a writing workshop to help people get in touch with their inner "Sister from Below."
The "Sister from Below" is a fierce inner figure. She emerges out of reverie, dream, a fleeting memory, a difficult emotion—she is the moment of inspiration—the muse.
This Sister is not about the ordinary business of life: work, shopping, making dinner. She speaks from other realms. If you'll allow, She'll whisper in your ear, lead your thoughts astray, fill you with strange yearnings, get you hot and bothered, send you off on some wild goose chase of a daydream, eat up hours of your time. She's a siren, a seductress, a shape-shifter . . . Why listen to such a troublemaker? Because She is essential to the creative process: She holds the keys to the doors of our imaginations and deeper life—the evolution of Soul.
Naomi Lowinsky, MFT, is an analyst member of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. She is the recent recipient of the Obama Millennium Poetry awarded for "Madelyn Dunham, Passing On.” Her most recent publication, The Sister From Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way (ISBN 9780981034423) has just been published by Fisher King Press. A reprinted edition of The Motherline: Every Woman's Journey to Find Her Female Roots (ISBN 9780981034461) has also just been published by Fisher King Press. She has had poetry published in many literary magazines and anthologies in addition to her two poetry collections, red clay is talking (2000) and crimes of the dreamer (2005). She has a private practice in Berkeley.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
10 AM - 4 PM
$125
CE Credit:$ 15
CE Hours: 6 Approved for MD, PHD, MFT, LCSW, RN
Location:
C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco
2040 Gough Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
415/771-8055 (phone)
415/771-8926 (fax)
jungmail@sfjung.org
Reserve for this event
Monday, May 25, 2009
Naomi's poems, Lisa's music
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Naomi Lowinsky interviewed by Jane Crown
Friday, May 15, 2009
Press Release: The Sister From Below
THE SISTER FROM BELOW:
WHEN THE MUSE GETS HER WAY
by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
(Recent recipient of the for Obama Millennium first prize writing award.)
“Naomi Lowinsky has given us a remarkable, fearless, and full autobiography. Speaking in poetic, psychologically sensitive, scholarly dialogues with her shape-shifting muse, she has created a new form . . . This is a beautiful book to treasure and spread among worthy friends.”
—Sylvia Perera, Author of Descent to the Goddess and Celtic Queen Maeve and Addiction.
“. . . Naomi Ruth Lowinsky offers us a superbly detailed investigation of the powerful, mythic forces of the world as they are revealed to the active creative self. Don’t miss this enlightening and fascinating book.”—David St. John, Author of Study for the World’s Body: New and Selected Poems and Prism.
“Naomi’s poetry and prose is infused with the suffering and joys of humans everywhere. Insightful and deeply moving, she brings us the food and water of life.”—Joan Chodorow, Author of Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology, Editor of C.G. Jung on Active Imagination.
“A passionate love letter to those who yearn to be heard. A must read for every woman who longs to write poetry.”—Maureen Murdock, Author of The Heroine’s Journey and Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory.
“Naomi Ruth Lowinsky reinterprets mythic and historical reality in provocative versions of the stories of Eurydice, Helen, Ruth, Naomi, and Sappho. The voice of the Sister from Below argues, cajoles, prods, explains, and yes, loves her human counterpart, and becomes the inspiration for Lowinsky’s stunning poetry in this highly original book.”—Betty de Shong Meador, Author of Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart and Princess, Priestess, Poet.
When the Muse Gets Her Way
—ISBN 978-0-9810344-2-3
Published by and available for purchase directly from Fisher King Press.
Also available from your local bookstore, and a host of on-line booksellers.
Publication Date: June 1st, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Press Release: The Motherline
THE MOTHERLINE:
EVERY WOMAN'S JOURNEY TO FIND HER FEMALE ROOTS
by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
(Recent recipient of the for Obama Millennium first prize writing award.)
Here what a few reviewers have had to say about The Motherline:
“(In) this perceptive and penetrating study . . . (Naomi Ruth Lowinsky) imaginatively applies Jungian, feminist and literary approaches to popular attitudes about . . . mothers and daughters and movingly, to personal experience.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
“A combination of years of scholarship and recordings of personal journeys, this book belongs in every woman’s psychology/spirituality collection.”
—Library Journal
“In this accessible volume, Jungian psychologist Lowinsky explores the pain that women feel when their mother-love is undervalued or erased.”
—ALA Booklist
—ISBN 978-0-9810344-6-1
Published by and available for purchase directly from Fisher King Press.
Also available from your local bookstore, and a host of on-line booksellers.
Publication Date: June 1st, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
"Madelyn Dunham, Passing On” wins First Prize in Obama Millennium Contest
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The Muse Gets Her Way
With great pleasure, Fisher King Press announces another forthcoming title.
Available Spring of 2009
The Sister from Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way
a Jungian Perspective by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
Who is She, this Sister from Below? She’s certainly not about the ordinary business of life: work, shopping, making dinner. She speaks from other realms. If you’ll allow, She’ll whisper in your ear, lead your thoughts astray, fill you with strange yearnings, get you hot and bothered, send you off on some wild goose chase of a daydream, eat up hours of your time. She’s a siren, a seductress, a shape-shifter . . . Why listen to such a troublemaker? Because She is essential to the creative process: She holds the keys to the doors of our imaginations and deeper life—the evolution of Soul.
The Sister emerges out of reverie, dream, a fleeting memory, a difficult emotion—she is the moment of inspiration—the muse. Naomi Ruth Lowinsky writes of nine manifestations in which the muse visits her, stirring up creative ferment, filling her with ghosts, mysteries, erotic teachings, the old religion—bringing forth her voice as a poet. Among these forms of the muse are the “Sister from Below,” the inner poet who has spoken for the soul since language began. The muse also appears as the ghost of a grandmother Naomi never met, who died in the Shoah—a grandmother with ‘unfinished business.’ She visits in the form of Old Mother India, whose culture Naomi visited as a young woman. She cracks open her Western mind, flooding her with many gods and goddesses. She appears as Sappho, the great lyric poet of the ancient world, who engages her in a lovely midlife fantasy. She comes as “Die Ür Naomi,” an old woman from the biblical story for which Naomi was named, who insists on telling Her version of the Book of Ruth. And in the end, surprisingly, the muse appears in the form of a man, a long dead poet whom Naomi loved in her youth.
The Sister from Below is a personal story, yet universal, of giving up a creative calling because of life’s obligations, and being called back to it in later life. This forthcoming Fisher King Press publication describes the intricate patterns of a rich inner life; it is a traveler’s memoir, with outer journeys to Italy, India and a Neolithic cave in Bulgaria, and inward journeys to biblical Canaan and Sappho’s Greece; it is filled with mythic experience, a poet’s story told. The Sister conveys the lived experience of the creative life, a life in which active imagination—the Jungian technique of engaging with inner figures—is an essential practice.
The Sister speaks to all those who want to cultivate an unlived promise—those on a spiritual path, those who are filled with the urgency of poems that have to be written, paintings that must be painted, journeys that yearn to be taken…
Naomi Ruth Lowinsky is the author of The Motherline: Every Woman’s Journey to Find Her Female Roots (1992) and numerous prose essays, many of which have been published in Psychological Perspectives and The Jung Journal. She has had poetry published in many literary magazines and anthologies, among them After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery, Weber Studies, Rattle, Atlanta Review, Tiferet and Asheville Poetry Review. Her two poetry collections, red clay is talking (2000) and crimes of the dreamer (2005) were published by Scarlet Tanager Books. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times. Naomi is a Jungian analyst in private practice, poetry and fiction editor of Psychological Perspectives, and a grandmother many times over.
When the Muse Gets Her Way
—by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
ISBN 978-0-9810344-2-3
Estimated shipping date June 2009,
call or email to place your advance order.
+1-831-238-7799
advance orders can also be placed with amazon.com