.
| Hearsay: |
Only the good die young? Poets go earliest, but we’re all doomed to die younger than the accountants.
Poets, by tradition, imagine themselves likely to die young. But that’s not a matter of imagination, says Associate Professor James C Kaufman, of California State University at San Bernardino. It’s a simple fact.
Kaufman looked at the lives and deaths of 1,987 deceased writers from four different cultures: American, Chinese, Turkish and eastern European. His 2003 study, The Cost of the Muse: Poets Die Young, paints a mathematically ghoulish picture. Poets drop off earliest, Kaufman explains, but authors in general are not a long-lived bunch.
He writes that: “The image of the writer as a doomed and sometimes tragic figure, bound to die young, can be backed up by research. Writers die young. This research finding has been consistently replicated in a variety of studies.”
Damn. This doesn’t seem to make any distinction based on craft, skill or literary worth. This constitutes what my pappy would call a “mixed blessing”. Some people I think of as smears on the language will go sooner than I expected, but so will I. Hm. I think I can live with that. So to speak. (Thanks, Glen)
January 2006
December
2005
November
2005
October
2005
September
2005
August
2005
July
2005
June
2005
May
2005
April
2005
March
2005
February
2005
January
2005
December
2004
November
2004
October
2004
September
2004
August
2004
July
2004
June
2004
May
2004
April
2004
March
2004
February
2004
January
2004
December
2003
November
2003
October
2003
September
2003
August
2003
Bookninja © Copyright
The opinions expressed on this site are those of individual participants
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the site owners,
organizers, or other participants.
[powered by WordPress.]
March 28th, 2008 at 10:32 am
I can bet insurance companies will be interested in this. (”Honestly, I’m a prose writer…okay, okay, I did some poetry when I was in high school, and I like using verse from time to time – but those are music lyrics, yeah – that’s it, music lyrics.”
March 28th, 2008 at 10:46 am
I wish i could say that i thought you were being paranoid, Matt, but I dont think you are. Those insurance guys like their actuarials.
March 28th, 2008 at 10:46 am
George, get a check up, will you?
March 28th, 2008 at 11:07 am
“It is hoped that the data presented here will help poets and mental-health professionals find ways to lessen what appears to be a sometimes negative impact of writing poetry on mortality and mental health.”
Too funny.
March 28th, 2008 at 11:53 am
It is a comfort to know that by not writing I am watching my health rather than just fucking off. What about second-hand writing, it is as deadly?
March 28th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Shit, does PK Page know about this?
March 28th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Marc Abrahams’s article does not mention the average lifespan of a poet. What do you think it is? Twenty-eight? Thirty-five? Forty-seven?
George, I encourage you to find out what the average lifespan of a poet is. Then, two or three years before you mark that birthday, I advise you to switch to another profession. Maybe plumbing.
Or you could model your career on the life of the poet Jack Gilbert. The Paris Review interviewed him when he was 80 years old. Gilbert obviously knows the secret to longevity.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Does this mean that Finnish poets can claim their booze as a business expense?
March 28th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
So, the shorter the line, the shorter the life?
Was it really the fact that they were poets that shortened their lives, or were they merely too precious for this harsh world? (Or is that redundant?)
Death is merely a caesura, anyway, isn’t it?
March 28th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Come to think of it, I bet they didn’t count Bukowski (who died at age 73). If they did, then the statistics would be tilted so that the average lifespan of a poet would be a healthy 50.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:40 am
Although the article vaguely hints at it, there’s no breakdown of death by “natural” causes and death by suicide. And no discussion of poverty.
But I’m going to write a play so I can buy an extra year.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
What about a Lithuanian dentist poet? Doomed from the start?
March 29th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
lol. whenever i go to the dentist, i always say thank you, and make sure that he knows he’s appreciated, just so maybe i can stave off his suicide. I guess i’ll have to start being nice to the poets i know, too.
March 29th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Perhaps they are overly eager to find out if they’ve had successful careers…