The Fusion Of Poetry And Wellness

The impact of one's health on their writing may sound like a strange topic for a post, but feeling like crud for a couple of weeks now has fueled this thought. I'm not offering any profound evidence to support any theories associated with my thoughts, rather I am considering this aloud as I write today's post.

Of course, I imagine that people likely do not work their best at anything when under the weather. Generalizing, that is likely a safe assumption. While none are coming to my mind at this moment, I am sure there are examples of writers who have created some profound work on their death bed. I wonder if they might have done better were they at full strength and feeling quite fit at the time? More particularly, I have considered that a possibility exists that a poet, very sick... even dying could perhaps write from a "place" that he or she might not otherwise outside the realm of such illness, and perhaps provide something more profound as a result of their own "place" in the physical world of health.

Feeling as lousy as I have certainly has not produced anything more profound from me these past few weeks. It has seemed to add to an urgency to write, but that urgency has not resulted in any stronger will or drive to write. The physical body remains limited in energy and that level of efficiency seems to out power any mixture of mental and emotional capacity to stay with a poem or project for too long.

I have tried the denial thing.... where you pretend you are not sick as long as you possibly can. Going to work in spite of how I feel because you figure that if it all stacks up and you come back feeling better, the increased work load just makes you feel lousy all over again.

So right now, I want to feel good if not great. I also want the move ahead on several projects. Things that I believe are best served better by both physical and mental health (attitude) which I do not feel are immediately within my control. As a result, I resort to thinking about how health and writing might be impacted beyond the obvious quantity factor and more to the nature of quality. Hence, you get today's blog. Long on thoughts, short on answers.