By: Cynthia Adams | Photos By: Nancy Evelyn

JEFF FALLIS , A PHD CANDIDATE IN THE CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM, found inspiration in historic archives concerning the poet known as “H.D.” and fodder for a new play about her relationship with Sigmund Freud, the world’s most famous analyst. Fallis mined historic archives at Yale University for information concerning Freud and his poet patient, Hilda Doolittle. Doolittle’s relationship with Freud began with her psychoanalysis in 1933 in Vienna, Austria.

“One could easily say that H.D. was one of the few patients of Freud who was anywhere near his intellectual equal, and the two didn’t agree on everything, especially the role of women in Freud’s psychological system and the importance of the visionary and the oracular,” Fallis says, who also hopes his play will further inspire others to read Doolittle’s work.

In June 2014, through a Graduate Research Award from the Wilson Center for the Humanities and Arts and a Summer Doctoral Research Fellowship from the UGA Graduate School, Fallis undertook research of Doolittle’s manuscripts at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

After his planned graduation in 2015, Fallis would like to teach creative writing and American Literature at the university level.

OREAD
By Hilda Doolittle
Whirl up, sea—
Whirl your pointed pines.
Splash your great pines
On our rocks.
Hurl your green over us—
Cover us with your pools of fir.