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Apr. 21st, 2004 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsychePoets Die Young
Poets die young -- younger than novelists, playwrights and other writers, a U.S. researcher said on Wednesday.
It could be because poets are tortured and prone to self-destruction, or it could be that poets become famous young, so their early deaths are noticed, said James Kaufman of the Learning Research Institute at California State University at San Bernardino.
[...] Kaufman has also studied poets and mental illness.
"What I found was pretty consistent with the death finding actually, female poets were much more likely to suffer from mental illness (e.g., be hospitalized, commit suicide, attempt suicide) than any other kind of writer and more likely than other eminent women," he said.
"I've dubbed this the 'Sylvia Plath Effect."'
Sylvia Plath was a poet and novelist who killed herself in 1963 at the age of 30.
There could also be a more benign explanation for poets' early demise, Kaufman said. "Poets produce twice as much of their lifetime output in their twenties as novelists do," he said.
Poets die young -- younger than novelists, playwrights and other writers, a U.S. researcher said on Wednesday.
It could be because poets are tortured and prone to self-destruction, or it could be that poets become famous young, so their early deaths are noticed, said James Kaufman of the Learning Research Institute at California State University at San Bernardino.
[...] Kaufman has also studied poets and mental illness.
"What I found was pretty consistent with the death finding actually, female poets were much more likely to suffer from mental illness (e.g., be hospitalized, commit suicide, attempt suicide) than any other kind of writer and more likely than other eminent women," he said.
"I've dubbed this the 'Sylvia Plath Effect."'
Sylvia Plath was a poet and novelist who killed herself in 1963 at the age of 30.
There could also be a more benign explanation for poets' early demise, Kaufman said. "Poets produce twice as much of their lifetime output in their twenties as novelists do," he said.