Poetry for Liberation

Abstract

This article focuses anecdotally on the therapeutic powers of poetry and of the poet himself or herself as a direct agent in the healing process. Four long poems-by Adam Mickiewicz, Thomas Gray, Robert Browning, and Walt Whitman-that won unexpectedly profound acceptance from a hospital audience of mentally ill people are analyzed in depth. What the poems have in common is that each demonstrates dramatically the poet's liberating role. Other episodes of a similar nature follow, culminating in a remarkable moment when a fast-fading tubercular schizophrenic was literally resuscitated by a cassette recording of his own voice reciting his own affirmative poetry. The poets are liberating Gods.Ralph Waldo Emerson'

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References

1. Emerson, Ralph Waldo (c. 1903). "The Poet." In Works, III. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 32-32.

2. This essay, circulated among the staffs of various New York metropolitan area hospitals at the time, was first published as "The Use of Poetry in a Private Mental Hospital," Poetry Therapy, Jack J. Leedy, editor (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1969), pp. 200-211, and reprinted in Leedy's Poetry as Healer: Mending the Troubled Mind (New York: Vanguard Press, 1985).

3. Kramer, Aaron (1956). Translation, "The Concert of Concerts." In Polish Review, I, pp. 63-67, and in Mills, Clark Adam Mickiewicz: New Selected Poems. New York: Voyages Press, 1967, pp. 71-72.

4. Bredvold, Louis I. et al., eds. (1956) Eighteenth Century Poetry Poetry and Prose. New York: Ronald Press, pp. 599-602, 1238-1238. The quotations from the poems are to be found in 11. 1-2, 10, 13, 17, 42, 46, 141-142.

5. The exact quotations from "Saul" can be found in 11. 28-30, 33, 78-79, 85, 91-97, 105, 107, 109, 117, 207-208, 213.

6. The exact quotations from "Out Of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" can be found in 11. 20-31, 26, 76-78, 60-62, 136-143.

7. These quotations are from "Song of Myself," 11. 367, 1011, 1013.

8. These lines, part of a notebook fragment, can be found on p.98 of Miller, James E. Jr., Whitman's "Song of Myself"-Origin, Growth, Meaning. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1964.

9. Kramer, Aaron (1962). Translation, "From My Journal." In Moses: Poems and Translations. New York: O'Hare Books, p.76-76.

10.

10. Spencer, Hope (1973). "Poetry of Patients Enlightens a Class-room." May 3, p. 3A-3A. The names of the hospital poets were changed to protect them. This sensitive essay, with in-depth interviews and generous quotations from the poetry, provides an indispensable supplement to the episode here narrated.

11.

11. "Three Long Island Poets," Spoken Words, WNYC, August 23, 1973. All poems included in this broadcast had recently appeared in the volume Long Night's Journey Back to Light, published jointly by Dowling College and Central Islip State Hospital, Pat Quin, editor.

12.

12. Ibid., opening poem of third section, "Day." Unpaged.