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 it’s 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 doesn’t
necessarily mean an Introduction to Poetry class should carry a warning
that poems may be hazardous to one’s 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.
