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A computer content analysis of a representative sample of the death poetry of Emily Dickinson is examined in an attempt to identify its therapeutic efficacy. The findings suggest that its therapeutic value lies in an underlying theme that offers a coherent experience with death from which the reader can achieve a degree of mastery and control.
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OBJECTIVE: To provide the reader with a basic understanding of the elements of poetry and to review poetry's contribution to nursing. The review will examine the poetry written by nurses, poetry's effect on the profession, and its use in education, patient care, and research. DATA SOURCES: Classic and current sources of poetry, which enhance the understanding of poetry and how poetry has changed over time are reviewed. The review of nursing literature was conducted in works published in the English language using the keywords: poetry, nursing, and aesthetics. The initial search included all nursing literature with the above keywords from 1960 to 2001. Articles from relevant journals and textbooks, which could contribute to the understanding of the use of poetry in the field of nursing, were included. CONCLUSION: The use of poetry in the nursing profession provides us with the opportunity to gain new meaning and understanding about the profession and the clientele served. Poetry is a rich textual medium that can assist in illuminating nursing's core belief about the uniqueness of the nurse-patient relationship, and enhance the 'art' of nursing and 'ways of knowing'.
"Quello che mai fue detto d'alfcuna," words from Dante, "strive to say which was never said by anyone." This is the art of true verbal expression, the essence of poetry. Poet W. H. Auden once wrote that "poetry can open spaces of meaning for the human spirit that is more intimate to other human beings than it is to ourselves" (Auden, 1968). Poetry has many definitions. To some, it is the rhythmic verse they remember from grade school or from Mother Goose. To others, poetry is a verse of meter and measure, of balance and harmony. However, to most individuals, poetry is the ultimate expression of human emotion. Roy (1999) believed that nursing is in need of poetry, in order to evoke the deepest of images, fears, questions, and quests of the human spirit and the nursing profession. This article examines the use of poetry and how it might be incorporated into staff education.
Sally Gadow's work is a sophisticated version of a familiar line of thought in nursing. She creates a chain of distinctions which is intended to differentiate cultural narratives, and particularly the 'science narrative', from imaginative narratives, especially poetry. Cultural narratives regulate and restrict; imaginative narratives are creative, liberating and potentially transcendent. These ideological effects are (supposedly) achieved through different structures of language. Scientific language, for example, is abstract and literal, while poetry is sensuous and metaphorical. In this paper, I argue that Gadow's way of discriminating between science and poetry fails. In the first place, the ideological valence she assigns to each of them is unwarranted. Science and poetry can both be harnessed to the project of emancipation, just as both can be incorporated in a strategy of oppression. In the second place, the claim that poetry and science are distinguished by their respective linguistic features--specifically, that one is metaphorical and the other literal--cannot be sustained. I illustrate this argument, as Gadow illustrates hers, by reference to the concept of embodiment, and consider whether Gadow is correct in thinking that poetry, not science, makes it possible for individuals (especially women) to 'reclaim the body'. I also suggest that Gadow's brand of postmodernism echoes Romanticism, whose defining characteristic was an insistent contrast between poetry and science. This is 'flip side' postmodernism, which merely opposes modernist values, preferring subjectivity to objectivity, feeling to rationality, and multiple realities to truth. It is less radical, and far less interesting, than 'remix' postmodernism, whose objective is not to reverse the polarities, but to reconfigure the entire circuit.
My purpose in this paper is to help you experience for yourself the potential of poetry to heal by feeling its power through your own voice. Many people have an intuitive sense that voice in general and poetry in particular can be healing. We have all experienced the comfort of soothing words. Finding the words to articulate a traumatic experience can bring relief. A letter between friends who are fighting can heal a relational wound. People are frequently moved to write a poem in times of extremity. In mainstream culture there are subjects that are not talked about. They are taboo. For example, each of us is going to die, but we do not talk about dying. We are all in the dialogue of illness, death and dying, whether or not we are talking about it. Poetry gives us ways to talk about it. Multiple ways of utilizing poetry for healing, growth and transformation will be presented including the Poetry and Brain Cancer project at UCLA. Particular attention will be given to issues of Palliative care. The reader will be directed to the scientific evidence of the efficacy of utilizing expressive writing. The developing professional field of Poetry Therapy, and The National Association for Poetry Therapy will be discussed.
Carper's patterns of knowing expose the relevance and importance of different knowledge to the enterprise of nursing. She noted that the aesthetic pattern enables nurses to know unique perceptive experiences. Poetry captures particular perceptive experiences and reconstructs them into universal wholes. The opportunity for nurses to write poetry can illuminate and legitimate their perceptive experiences which often become worn or hidden in the everyday work world and in other ways of knowing. Expressing nursing experiences through writing poetry generally involves three phases: (a) creating an image of experience, (b) fully articulating the image, and (c) sharing a clear, new meaning of the image. A poem, written to express one author's unique nursing experience, is used to explore the knowledge gained through the process of writing poetry. Writing poetry can help nurses connect with and maintain their personal and professional history. Moreover, writing poetry increases our awareness of the sensibilities of nursing practice and the meanings that these sensibilities add to the depth and design of the discipline.
BACKGROUND: Poetry plays an age-old role in the art of healing. Although medicine today seems distant from the world of poetic expression, there are surprising commonalities between the two. OBJECTIVES: In this essay we reflect on three aspects of healing that are fostered by poetry. OBSERVATIONS: Practicing medicine with too many facts and not enough poetry leads to dissatisfaction, disappointment, and impaired healing, especially in the care of the terminally ill. Likewise, poetry deficiency cuts off an important avenue for physician self-awareness and reflectivity. Alternatively, three aspects of healing are fostered by poetry: the power of the word to heal (and also harm); the skill of "negative capability" that enhances physician effectiveness; and empathic connection, or compassionate presence, a relationship that heals without words. CONCLUSION: Reading and writing poetry can help physicians, especially those who care for dying patients, become more reflective, creative, and compassionate practitioners.
This article is a personal reflection and exploration of the potential of poetry in palliative care. Poetry can help enable expression of individuals' deepest unspoken concerns and may provide a means of providing spiritual care. The author draws on her personal experience as a community nurse, together with the views of patients and colleagues, and discusses the literature. Some limitations to the use of poetry are considered, as are the skills needed to help patients use poetry. To illustrate the potential therapeutic value of poetry in palliative care, examples of poems by poets, patients and the author are included. The article concludes that poetry can bring about a sense of healing, and should be considered as a possible addition to other holistic therapies.
The words in a large and representative sample of Robert Frost's poetry were compared with information in several data bases which provided estimates of the poetry's pleasantness, arousal, emotionality, imagery, and linguistic complexity. Findings confirmed that Frost's poetry was linguistically simple and emotionally restrained in comparison to that of his cohort. They also highlighted the increasing variability in Frost's poetry across time and its decreasing imagery. Frost's poetry was more restrained than that of his male cohort but similar to the poetry of his female cohort in its linguistic simplicity. Frost's acknowledged death poems were in fact quite pleasant and passive in emotional tone.
TOPIC: Does writing and reading poetry help nurse-therapists, students, and clients reflect on significant meanings and gain a greater understanding of intense clinical situations? PURPOSE: To describe the use of poetry in managing intense feelings, discuss the relevant literature, articulate how students and clients responded to the use of poetry, and address the limitations of such an approach. SOURCES: Published literature, clinical expertise, and poems written by the author. CONCLUSIONS: Writing and reading poetry helps clinicians, students, and clients give voice to situations that touch their hearts. Poetry and literature should be used more extensively in clinical and educational settings.
Poetry is a vehicle for the expression of intense human encounters arising from holistic nursing practice. Writing poetry is a way to develop and communicate the esthetic knowledge of the discipline. The process of writing poetry about nursing experiences provides the nurse with a method of coping and a means of personal growth. Sharing poetry about nursing affirms other nurses and educates those outside the discipline regarding the richness and complexity of human care situations and nursing practice.
This teaching technique can be adapted to use with young children. The use of rhymes may be easier and more fun for younger students. Also, this teaching technique can be used to address numerous health issues, which makes it appropriate for all health content areas. In addition to using student selections that illustrate various emotions, other resources are available for this activity. Libraries and bookstores offer wide selections of books containing poetry and quotations. In addition to books about haiku, consider general poetry selections by Maya Angelou, e.e. cummings, Ogden Nash, and Shel Silverstein. Musical selections can represent different styles, such as the Beatles' "Yesterday"; Blind Melon's "Change"; Garth Brooks' "The Dance"; Eric Clapton's "Tears from Heaven"; Gloria Estefan's "Coming Out of the Dark"; Whitney Houston's "Emotional" and "I Will Always Love You"; and Elton John's "Circle of Life." Internet sites also can be accessed for poetry samples (see Internet Resources). An Internet resource for ordering discounted books, including selections about haiku and poetry, is Amazon.com--Earth's Largest Book store, at http:www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ subst/home/home.html/0184-8423170-571096.
The poetry of adolescents in despair may provide us with early signs of suicide; hence referral to professional help may result at an early stage. The present study concentrated on two adolescents who wrote poetry and committed suicide. The words used in these adolescents' poetry and in the poetry of two nonsuicidal adolescents were analyzed and classified into semantic fields. Significant differences were found between the suicide and the control groups. These differences showed themselves in the vigor and intensity of the loaded words in the suicide group, as well as in the more extreme occurrence of two major foci, "Death" and "Bad Situation." These foci are demonstrated in a constructed model that may guide parents and professionals in early detection of suicide.
In the practice of general psychiatry, art therapy in the form of painting is widely employed. Music and drama similarly provide regular treatment occasions. The use of poetry is less familiar and is little discussed in the literature. This paper reviews a therapeutic liaison, happening largely by chance, which depended almost exclusively upon an exchange of verse. The relationship between the processes of psychotherapy, on the one hand, and the writing and reading of poetry, on the other, is suggested and illustrated by the patient's writings. It may be that good poetry, like successful psychotherapy, arises from disturbed emotions only when they are given resolution and form. Exceptionally the two go hand-in-hand.
The author argues that mental pain consists of a wordless sense of self-rupture, longing and psychic helplessness that is vague and difficult to convey to others. It usually follows the loss of a significant object or its abrupt refusal to meet one's anaclitic needs. This results in the laceration of an unconscious, fused self-object core of the self. Abruptly precipitated discrepancies between the actual and wished-for self-states add to the genesis of mental pain. Issues of hatred, guilt, moral masochism as well as fantasies of being beaten can also be folded into the experience of mental pain. The feeling is highly disturbing and is warded off by psychic retreat, manic defence, induction of pain into others and changing the form and function of pain. Each of these can have a pathological or healthy outcome depending upon the intrapsychic and social context and upon whether they ultimately permit mourning to take place or not. Poetry serves to render mental pain bearable by enhancing empathy with one's own repudiated parts. With the help of two clinical vignettes, the multi-faceted (defensive, formal and content-based) role of poetry in reducing mental pain, enhancing mentalisation of its sources and facilitating mourning is discussed. It is suggested that through poetry, culture and affect meet and, in this encounter, both are enriched.