Here is an interesting link
Poets dying
young
Hmm... might as well,
Release Date: Dec. 1, 2003
RESEARCH SEEKS ANSWER
TO A POET DYING YOUNG
By Aaron Levin, Science Writer
Health Behavior News Service
--------------------------------------------------
Poets often find death fascinating, and now one psychologist
suggests a connection: While writers on the whole die young, poets
die even younger.
A new movie biography of Sylvia Plath reinforces the image of the
poet as meteorite, flashing brightly and briefly across the sky
before burning out. Plath, who committed suicide at age 31,
typified the short lives of other notable poets like John Keats,
who died of tuberculosis at 26, or Hart Crane, who ended his life
at 33.
James C. Kaufman, Ph.D., of California State University at San
Bernardino, writing in a recent issue of the journal Death Studies,
combed through biographical reference works to find birth and death
dates for 1,987 poets, playwrights, novelists and non-fiction
writers from North America, China, Turkey and Eastern Europe. He
then sorted the results by region, gender and literary
specialty.
On average, non-fiction writers lived 67.9 years, novelists lived
66.0 years and playwrights 63.4 years. Poets averaged only 62.2
years. The rankings were similar for both male and female writers,
although the women in each category outlived the men.
Both male and female poets had the shortest life spans of all four
types of writers, and poets had the shortest life spans in three of
the four cultures, Kaufman says. Only in Eastern Europe did poets
squeak past playwrights by a few months, and that difference was
not statistically significant.
What accounts for these variations in longevity? Kaufman advances
several possible reasons. Poets may die younger because they are
more likely to suffer from mental illness, especially depression,
which is a risk factor for suicide.
Poetry may appeal to people who are more likely to be
self-destructive, he says.
I think Professor Kaufman is way off course, says former U.S.
Poet Laureate Billy Collins, who so far has lived five months
longer than the average poet. The assumed association of poets
with mental disorders and depression is a romantic holdover.
Collins has his own hypothesis. If poets really do die sooner than
other writers and notice its not that much sooner they do so
because of the nature of poetry, says Collins, a professor at
Lehman College, City University of New York, in an e-mail
interview. Because poems are briefer (to say the least) than
novels, books of non-fiction and plays, the poet frequently is
returned to zero. He faces the blank page on an almost daily basis.
Thus the poet experiences more literary stress than writers in
other genres. And we know the connection between stress and
mortality.
The fact that a Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton may die young doesnt
necessarily mean an Introduction to Poetry class should carry a
warning that poems may be hazardous to ones health, Kaufman says.
The research, however, may stimulate poets and mental health
professionals find ways to lessen the occasional negative impact of
writing poetry, he says.
Other researchers have said that poets who ultimately commit
suicide may leave clues in their writings.
In poems written throughout their careers, suicidal poets used
significantly more first-person singular self-references (I,
me, my) and fewer first-person plural words than non-suicidal
poets did, researchers Shannon W. Stirman and James W. Pennebaker
wrote in 2001. They also tended to decrease their use of
communication words (such as talk, share and listen) over
time, while non-suicidal poets displayed an opposing trend. For
more information about the Stirman and Pennebaker study, see
http://www.cfah.org/hbns/newsrelease/signs7-24-01.cfm.
Kaufman points out that poetry is lonely work. Non-fiction writers
interact with sources or editors and playwrights deal with actors
and directors, implying healthy contact with other human beings.
Poets (at least in legend) scribble alone in unheated garrets,
susceptible to both loneliness and infection.
Or perhaps the statistics mask the reality that poets produce more
of their lifetime output when young, compared to other writers.
Thus, they become notable enough to show up in reference books
despite early deaths.
One poet, A. E. Housman, who died at 77, wrote immortally in To an
Athlete Dying Young that there is some advantage to such a
fate:
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
