I heard on the radio the other night that Ted Hughes thought he'd got cancer because writing too much prose instead of poetry had lowered his resistance to illness. He thought poetry had this protective, even healing power that transformed those who practise it and those who are exposed to it.
It's partly, by all accounts, why he took the Laureateship. He thought he might be able to contribute to the healing of poor old England.
Who knows. Some might think it's a demented idea. Others might admire it as an expression of a romance in his nature that didn't always come over in his writing. But at the least you have to admire his commitment to his craft. To believe that he would actually get a terminal illness because he didn't practise it as dedicatedly as he should have done! How many of us believe in poetry to that extent?
My own view is probably closer to Allen Ginsberg's, when, discussing the significance of poetry as a means of effecting social change, he said, "In the long term, it may have an ameliorating effect on the spirit." Which is really enough in this sad, sick world.
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