Patient Poets

"'Patient poets: Illness from inside out' invites readers to consider what caregivers and medical professionals may learn from poetry by patients. It offers reflections on poetry as a particularly apt vehicle for articulating the often isolating experiences of pain, fatigue, changed life rhythms, altered self-understanding, embarrassment, resistance, and acceptance. The chapters discuss poems that represent a particular dimension of the experience of illness or disability -- foreboding, isolation, fear, shame, wry humor, acceptance, deepening self-knowledge." -- Back cover.

Best-selling author Steven Heighton's considerable dramatic lyric powers reach a new sophistication and intensity in the astonishing new collection Patient Frame. The book ranges from the court of the Medicis to the Mai Lai massacre; from love for a daughter and mother, through nightmare and displacement, to moments of painful acceptance; and from erotic passion to situations of deep moral failure. Heighton's work has long shown a resolve to achieve viable rapprochement between the mind’s cold structures and the earthbound drives of the body, and here these poems are part of an ongoing search, a scanning of our human horizons for moments of lasting value. These dynamic, vigorous, and tender poems are as engaged with the moment as they are with traditions of East and West. The collection also brings together more of Heighton's vital translations of poets as diverse as Jorge Luis Borges and Horace.

Although readers of prose fiction sometimes find descriptive passages superfluous or boring, description itself is often the most important aspect of a poem. This book examines how a variety of contemporary poets use description in their work. Description has been the great burden of poetry. How do poets see the world? How do they look at it? What do they look for? Is description an end in itself, or a means of expressing desire? Ezra Pound demanded that a poem should represent the external world as objectively and directly as possible, and William Butler Yeats, in his introduction to The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936), said that he and his generation were rebelling against, inter alia, "irrelevant descriptions of nature" in the work of their predecessors. The poets in this book, however, who are distinct in many ways from one another, all observe the external world of nature or the reflected world of art, and make relevant poems out of their observations. This study deals with the crisp, elegant work of Charles Tomlinson, the swirling baroque poetry of Amy Clampitt, the metaphysical meditations of Charles Wright from a position in his backyard, the weather reports and landscapes of John Ashbery, and the "new way of looking" that Jorie Graham proposes to explore in her increasingly fragmented poems. All of these poets, plus others (Gary Snyder, Theodore Weiss, Irving Feldman, Richard Howard) who are dealt with more briefly, attend to what Wallace Stevens, in a memorable phrase, calls "the way things look each day." The ordinariness of daily reality is the beginning of the poets' own idiosyncratic, indeed unique, visions and styles.

J. Marion Sims, the legendary, now controversial, 19th century gynecologist looms large in Bettina Judd's recent collection Patient. Sophisticated, complex, haunting, Patient. beckons readers to remember, to feel, to think deeply, to discover, to probe. Slavery's stench, the bodies of Black women, death, scientific racism, memory-these themes link the poems in extraordinary ways. Judd is a masterful new poet. Patient. is unforgettable!! -Beverly Guy-Sheftall

In this collection of 16 essays, poets discuss psychiatric treatment and their work. Poets on Prozac shatters the notion that madness fuels creativity by giving voice to contemporary poets who have battled myriad psychiatric disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse. The sixteen essays collected here address many provocative questions: Does emotional distress inspire great work? Is artistry enhanced or diminished by mental illness? What effect does substance abuse have on esthetic vision? Do psychoactive medications impinge on ingenuity? Can treatment enhance inherent talents, or does relieving emotional pain shut off the creative process? Featuring examples of each contributor’s poetry before, during, and after treatment, this original and thoughtful collection finally puts to rest the idea that a tortured soul is one’s finest muse. Honorable Mention, 2008 PROSE Award for Best Book in Psychology. “A fascinating collection of 16 essays, as insightful as they are compulsively readable. Each is honest and sharply written, covering a range of issues (depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, psychosis, substance abuse or, in acutely deadpan Andrew Hudgins’s case, “tics, twitches, allergies, tooth-grinding, acid reflux, migraines . . . and shingles”) along with treatment methods, incorporating personal anecdotes and excerpts from poems and journals. . . . Anyone affected by mental illness or intrigued by the question of its role in the arts should find this volume absorbing.” —Publishers Weekly “Berlin has done a marvelous job of showing us how ordinary poets are; the selected poets have shown us that mental illness shares with other experiences a capacity to reveal our humanity.” —Metapsychology

Governor General's Literary Award finalist and bestselling author Steven Heighton's considerable dramatic lyric powers reach a new sophistication and intensity in his astonishing collection Patient Frame. From the court of Medici to the My Lai massacre; from love for a daughter and mother, through nightmare and displacement, to moments of painful acceptance; from erotic passion to situations of deep moral failure, these poems are part of an ongoing search, a scanning of our human horizons for moments of lasting value. Heighton's work has long shown a resolve to achieve some viable rapprochement between the mind's cold structures and the earthbound drives of the body. Dynamic, vigorous, tender poems as engaged with the moment as they are with traditions of East and West. Patient Frame brings together more of Heighton's vital translations of poets as diverse as Jorge Luis Borges and Horace.