Are crazy folk better at poetry

[Erthona]

The psychiatric profession is at about the same level as medicine was when they thought bleeding was a good response to illness. They pass out SRI's and have no idea about the mechanism. But to answer the initial question. Poetry delves into non-ordinary areas of consciousness, so by definition, most poets would be non-ordinary, often this is confused with being crazy, which may have some validity, but it should not be confused with mentally ill. Generally speaking, a mentally ill person writing poetry is equivalent to having people in love write love poetry...and we know how that turns out. Poets tend to be more aware of things that "normal" people aren't, and it is fairly prevalent that to deal with this sensitivity they tend to abuse substances. People often think substance abuse is a requirement for writing poetry, when it is in fact a response to the poetic temperament. This does not mean I condone substance abuse (it actually closes off inspiration rather opening it up), I merely point out the causal connection in relation to the poet being "crazy". As has been said before, "you would be crazy also if you drank that much". Of course there are no restriction on what kind of person writes bad poetry, as unfortunately there are no restrictions on people who write bad poetry (if you recognize the difference between those two statements you are probably a poet and therefore crazy).

Dale