My Barbaric Yawp

Author(s)Richard M. Berlin, MD

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Key Takeaways

Whitman’s “barbaric yawp” becomes a motif for self-assertion, translating childhood exuberance into a lifelong struggle for voice and identity.
The sandbox “kingdom” imagery positions early development as an experiment in control, entitlement, and imagined dominion.
Maternal presence is rendered indirect yet decisive, emphasizing the child’s dependence on being recognized while foreshadowing enmeshment and boundary ambiguity.
The closing turn links early Oedipal longing to adult individuation, implying escalating emotional volume to clarify where mother ends and son begins.

"I’m a four-year-old prince with a bag of Jack Frost sand filling my sandbox kingdom..."

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

– Walt Whitman

In the old photo

I’m a four-year-old prince

with a bag of Jack Frost sand

filling my sandbox kingdom.

Chest bared, head held high,

milk teeth frame a wide-open

mouth sounding my barbaric yawp

over Jersey-shore bungalows

and sea-pine scruff,

while off-camera

my sun-tanned mother,

not quite twenty-three,

understands her pre-med

first-born son’s declaration

of Oedipal love and his sense

of royalty, decades before

he learned how much louder

he would need to scream before

he could be sure his mother knew

where she ended and he began.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 28 years in Psychiatric Times in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is an instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest book is Tender Fences.