Toward a “Therapeuticks of Poesy”

Although the purported benefits of poetry are myriad, from the quantitatively described impact of writing it on a variety of health conditions to more qualitative descriptions of its utility in medical education settings, those who assert its value must agree that poetry is no panacea. Even more important, any facile application of poetry’s power in the service of remedying such problems as clinician burnout—the definition and prevalence of which are debated—begs consideration. In “The Therapeuticks of Poesy,” we are reminded, through tongue-in-cheek humor and deadly seriousness, that a high-minded praxis of poetry in medicine based on academic theories and thin research (however well-intentioned) may actually diminish the ancient craft. While we celebrate the individual and find bracing the shock of self-recognition in creative arts like poetry in US culture, in many others drawing attention to the traumatized self may be deemed distasteful, or even shameful; many immigrants’ narratives that address suffering more typically express it through the lens of communal experience—as the poem says, “Poetry’s window is decidedly non-therapeutic/(Especially if written by a Russian).” It bears remembering always that “A poem is an act of revolution./A poem is a bomb and not a balm.” Many poets would agree that even when poetry does provide comfort or ease pain, it does so paradoxically, even improbably, through language that explodes insular self-regard, brilliantly “Burning with love for the ill;/In revolt against those who oppress them.”