Creative Work as Therapy

The creative arts have long been used as healing modalities, and appreciation of their benefits in treating illness continues to grow in medical circles. In “Rehab,” the neurologic basis for how 2 specific crafts, poetry and woodworking, might interact is hinted at in the opening stanza, in which the speaker of the poem notes that the patient, David, has undergone neurosurgery that has left him nearly blind, implying the locus of this injury—in brain pathways that connect sight with motor function—is also where poem-making and reconstructing a birdhouse might have their reparative effects. “So I guide his hands/over the rough surface/of the birdhouse/so he can feel stray splinters of wood,” halting, empathetic lines, like hands touching in their joint labor, evoke the sharing of sight and sense the project requires, voiced by an occupational therapist whose presence alongside the doctor underscores the clinical utility of art therapy. More reassuring words, “It’s OK, the doctor’s here to help you,” continue to develop the metaphor of creating, whether of poetry or a restored birdhouse, as not just treatment, but renewal. That doctor and patient are brought close together by their work further illustrates how such a hands-on project subverts the usual more detached concern of clinical interactions, and how creative collaboration is a vehicle for a deeply meaningful therapeutic alliance. As the poem concludes so demonstratively: “We work together./We learn together.//In time,/the birds have a new home.”