"The Doctor" by Luke FildesDiscussion: Is Poetry Good for Your Health? The Society April 16, 2025 Poetry, Science 14 Comments . Australian poet Clive Boddy sent in the article “How Poetry Changes You and Your Brain” published in Greater Good Magazine, which includes the following: A 2022 study found creative expression therapy using poetry was a powerful trauma support tool for unaccompanied refugee minors from Afghanistan; and poetry activities have been linked to improved self-awareness, healthier functioning, and increased positive social interactions, especially when implemented alongside therapeutic storytelling, for people with certain unhealthy coping mechanisms… While other human pleasures, like cinnamon rolls (or more harmful substances researched by psychologists), trigger the brain’s dopamine-based “wanting system,” aesthetic pleasure comes from a more “disinterested interest”—a fascination without desire more associated with our brain’s opiate- and cannabinoid-based “liking system,” she writes. Read the rest of the article here: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_poetry_changes_you_and_your_brain Feel free to comment and discuss below. . . NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. ***Read Our Comments Policy Here*** 14 Responses Joseph S. Salemi April 16, 2025 No one is commenting because we’re all appalled. Reply Mike Bryant April 16, 2025 Science has become a laughing stock. While I love poetry, this study seems to be of the “bought and paid for” variety that has sold us way too many lies. The thing that jumped out at me was the claim that poetry engages the brain’s “liking system” (opiate/cannabinoid-based) vs. dopamine-driven “wanting system.” The whole thing is a bunch of academese/neuroscience fluffery meant to sound sciency. Reply Mike Bryant April 16, 2025 The 2022 study by Kevers was funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) under grant number G056618N. The Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) is primarily funded by the Flemish government, with additional contributions from the Belgian federal government and the Belgian National Lottery. It also receives support from partner institutes and companies, particularly for specific projects or infrastructure. The FWO operates as a public research council, focusing on fundamental and strategic research in Flanders, and its funding model is rooted in Belgian public resources and regional innovation policies. I am suspicious of any study that any government pays for, but especially a Belgian funded study. Freedom is wobbly here in the USA, but it is in its death throes in the EU. Reply Joseph S. Salemi April 16, 2025 If you go to the Greater Good Magazine’s website, you’ll see the truth in spades. It is one of those “Let’s-all-feel-good-and-be-happy” publications directed at a readership of secular, consumerist, modish, and careerist types whose lives seem to be best represented by a Smiley-Face button. The magazine’s subtitle (“Science-Based Insights for a Meaningful Life”) is the sort of description that is already intellectually grating. As for examples of the kind of things discussed, try these: Share Your Feelings Go Offline Decluttering Your Life Healthier Food Choices There’s even this one, that really set my teeth on edge: “Poetry for kinder communities.” Good swiving grief! Let’s write poetry so that we can all be pleasant and well-adjusted and kind to each other? Is that what they want us to do? Quite frankly, for this magazine and its clientele human life seems to be all about getting comfortable and secure, maintaining health, and congratulating oneself on having always made the right choices for those goals. Their evaluation of poetry appears solely based on how the art might be useful for maintaining one’s brain function, and having “increased positive social interactions.” In other words, poetry is just another useful anodyne to keep your optimum body weight and complacency. Is this really what the magnificent and ancient craft of poetry is about? Making yourself a happy and well-adjusted consumer in a materialist society, and being with the in-crowd who all look and feel good? Reply Evan Mantyk April 16, 2025 Thank you, Clive. I found this interesting. I tend to have a very open mind about science, including the Mozart Effect and many other observable though often not repeatable phenomena. It would not surprise me if someone calming their minds down and listening to something narrative that is connecting them to another human being had some observable positive effects, but would it really match up against some placebo? The line that lumps together “Alfred Tennyson or Naomi Shihab Nye” is particularly telling. Nye’s work is not particularly good and cannot be placed next to Tennyson in my opinion. It would be interesting to me if someone studied the effects of good classical poetry versus more modern verse. Reply Margaret Coats April 17, 2025 Yes, thank you, Clive–and thank you, Evan, for directing the discussion to the topic, rather than to the article and author whose pretensions we may not share, or to sponsors and funding. Health is in fact something that transcends scientific measurement, which is why individual, “anecdotal” information is important. No prescription benefits everyone equally anyway. I’ve never considered whether poetry is good for health, but it has long been so much a part of my life that I would be distressed (and maybe less physically healthy) without it. The effect, as Evan suggests, comes from poetry I relish as good, which is always classical in some sense. I am interested in the points drawn out from the article that have to do with the nature of aesthetic pleasure as “liking” rather than “wanting.” This implies that poetry is available and beneficial in a broad sense that might tend to calmness and charity as well as to the clarity in judgment needed when those higher virtues are less suited to needs of the moment. Worth further consideration. Reply Susan Jarvis Bryant April 17, 2025 What an interesting discussion – a subject I come to with an open mind. Poetry has benefited me in many ways. It has lifted my spirits. It has soothed me. It has educated me. It has entertained me. And it has flown me across an ocean to a beautiful life brimming with the wonder of poetry. I adore poetry because I am human, and art is integral to being human. Life is richer because of poetry. These are my personal thoughts, for what they are worth. This is where I feel the problem lies. The act of studying or promoting poetry as a health benefit – especially when it’s funded or sanctioned by government agencies – raises significant questions about freedom of expression and who gets to decide which voices are heard. And in today’s world of censorship, this study proves that poetry has become another tool for control, rather than a space for self-expression and resistance to the social “norms” set by the very people paying for those studies. When any research is filtered through official channels or paid for by public funds, we risk losing the freedom that makes poetry powerful. What does “therapeutic” and “healthy” poetry look like? Obviously, those who are paid a handsome sum to tell us will know. But even if they’re not paid, the type of poetry that’s healthy is purely subjective. Satirical poetry challenges the status quo. The powers that be find it offensive for obvious reasons. I am tempted to write a satirical poem on this propagandist quote from the article: A poem that praises the virtue of “sticking out,” “Identity” tends to resonate with middle schoolers, who frequently chafe against pressure to conform to expectations during adolescence. Students facing this struggle for acceptance can feel affirmed by the speaker’s endorsement of individuality, even when uniqueness runs counter to popular visions of beauty or correctness. This article has an agenda that is evident – an agenda designed to silence speech that’s uncomfortable for the chosen few. Freedom of expression means defending the right to write – and that includes writing about subjects that make us feel uncomfortable. I have no problem with people seeking “higher virtues” through poetry. I have a problem when those “higher virtues” are forced upon poets and readers in the interest of promoting an ideology – the very thing poetry should be able to rail against. Reply Mike Bryant April 17, 2025 Susan, you’re absolutely right… I am thrilled that poetry brought us together. We met on a poetry site! Poetry has been great for me and my brain health because I found you! Yes, poetry and creative endeavors are great for many reasons. But, as for the creeps that believe they have all the answers… do we really want these ”affirmers” of “identity” in our schools reading poetry to our children as they gaze into their eyes and take notes? Do we want ideologues choosing which poems they, or we, are permitted to read? Do we want these ideologues to perform brain therapy, biblio or otherwise, on our children or on us? Poetry is not about creating “positive social interactions.” Poetry challenges, disturbs, and rattles cages. The greatest poems often leave us uncomfortable and questioning, not just “happy and well-adjusted.” Poetry isn’t meant to make us more functional workers with “healthier coping mechanisms” – it’s meant to connect us with truth, beauty, and the full range of human experience, including the difficult parts. Reply Joseph S. Salemi April 17, 2025 You’ve zeroed in on the problem, Susan. When any agency or institution or bureaucracy or cult or medical combine involves itself with a human activity, that activity is subtly regulated at first, and heavily regulated eventually. Today, the word “health” (or that absolutely horrid synonym, “wellness”) has become a talismanic icon, and anything that claims to preserve it or promote it carries a pseudo-religious mandate. Combine this health mandate with the more openly political mandate for ideological conformism as dictated by our Deep State, and you have a set of shackles to control the population in the name of “science” and “virtue.” The COVID hysteria was a flagrant instance of this tendency. We make poetry to please ourselves, and we also hope that it may be pleasing to others. But when someone comes along and tells us that poetry is “good for our health and our social adjustment” only if it is made in certain ways and in accord with certain ethical or doctrinal precepts, then it is our task as poets to tell that person to bugger off. Reply James Sale April 17, 2025 I just love those turns of phrase that Joe comes up with: ‘bugger off’. Perfect. Yep, I get it. It’s all about half-truths, isn’t it? Who could argue with reading more? But then, what kind of poets? Two thirds of those cited I’d never heard of, and so I am almost certain a diet of pernicious, modernist, pointless literature: just as poetry can enable your health – Apollo was the god poetry and health – so too can ‘crap’ (sorry, I slipped into Joe-mode!) poetry endanger it. So much pseudo-science: let’s rediscover the sublime; recommend it, and as we can write-top-notch stuff! Reply Joseph S. Salemi April 17, 2025 I learned the expression “to bugger off” from a Monty Python film. When I visited England, I found out from some Brits what the verb “bugger” actually meant. Reply Brian Yapko April 17, 2025 An interesting article and equally interesting commentary. I intuitively recoil from articles of this nature because they smack heavily of that same atheist agenda that directs us to look for the evolutionary basis of love and altruism in anthropology and the environmental pressures faced by our paleolithic ancestors. The mindset behind this type of analysis presupposes that every aspect of human existence is scientifically verifiable and, further, tells us that there is nothing which is not negotiable — whether that means changing a person’s gender to eugenics to approving the composting of human bodies. To reduce the value of the very concept of art to whether or not it yields a measurable result is interesting from a mechanistic standpoint but appalling to those who believe in the soul. When spiritual components to the subject – whether love or poetry or music or whatever – are dismissed as unworthy of even passing consideration as part of an analysis of the subject, I see a red flag. Whether this is done by direct denigration versus simple omission does not matter. The agenda becomes clear. “Science-based insights for a meaningful life.” This is an obvious advocacy for atheism. Fair enough, if that’s your thing. But let’s not ignore that this agenda is a barely-veiled foundation for this article. It is yet another attempt to unweave the rainbow to provide a respectable scientific “cover” to someone who can’t abide the idea of spiritual component to the creation and appreciation of poetry. The idea of putting poetry on the same level as a love of cinnamon rolls and the desire for a dopamine hit depresses me. Then, there is this sentence: “Poetry therapy is apt for giving voice to and constructing meaning from core metaphors patients hold about their lives…” I see. Poetry is acceptable because it offers a scientifically unembarressing way of acknowledging faith. So long as it’s regarded as metaphor. Again, a defensible position I suppose. But it’s no wonder we live in the most depressive age in the history of humanity. I prefer to get my psychological insights from Jung rather than Freud. And I suggest the faith-averse author of this article read The Meaning of Life by Viktor Frankl. We are more than our measurable reactions and life is more than how our vital signs and “happiness index” are affected by various stimuli. In my personal view, poetry is a good and noble thing which makes humanity better and whose quality and quantity strikes me as a meaningful indicator of the health of its representative culture. In the end it doesn’t even matter where we may happen to fall on the faith spectrum. if we’re doing it for the dopamine hits rather than to fuel the exploration of the world, the exploration of the heart or the exploration of the soul – well then something is deeply wrong. Reply Paul A. Freeman April 18, 2025 Not wishing to get into the science or politics debates, for me, finding a well-written poem, usually about nature or something topically funny, I find mentally soothing. Occasionally, a one-off poet submitting at the SCP leaves a gem and is never heard of again, reminding us that all is not so bleak out there. For instance, some of the SCP 2024 International high school poetry competition winners had a thoroughly positive outlook on ageing that I found so refreshing. I enter a monthly poetry competition and have recently tried to keep things light. From the comments received, although its a small gesture, it is much appreciated. In Britain, there’s a poet called Brian Bilston, who some might condemn as being too left for their liking. However, it being International Haiku Poetry Day, yesterday (enough to put some in a bad mood), he posted a selection of humorous haikus, one of which was: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Alright – Thou art pretty hot. As they say – ‘laughter is the best medicine’. Oh, and on the subject of physical health, when running up hill in Abu Dhabi, or when swimming the last eighteen lengths (laps) of my 50, I will recite the opening lines of Chaucer’s general prologue to chivvy me on and keep them memorised. And when we finish writing a poem, don’t we all get that buzz, that natural high? Okay, that’s my tuppence worth. Reply Joseph S. Salemi April 18, 2025 Well, good poetry makes all of us feel good, there’s no arguing with that. And Bilston’s haiku is really funny. Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Mike Bryant April 16, 2025 Science has become a laughing stock. While I love poetry, this study seems to be of the “bought and paid for” variety that has sold us way too many lies. The thing that jumped out at me was the claim that poetry engages the brain’s “liking system” (opiate/cannabinoid-based) vs. dopamine-driven “wanting system.” The whole thing is a bunch of academese/neuroscience fluffery meant to sound sciency. Reply
Mike Bryant April 16, 2025 The 2022 study by Kevers was funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) under grant number G056618N. The Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) is primarily funded by the Flemish government, with additional contributions from the Belgian federal government and the Belgian National Lottery. It also receives support from partner institutes and companies, particularly for specific projects or infrastructure. The FWO operates as a public research council, focusing on fundamental and strategic research in Flanders, and its funding model is rooted in Belgian public resources and regional innovation policies. I am suspicious of any study that any government pays for, but especially a Belgian funded study. Freedom is wobbly here in the USA, but it is in its death throes in the EU. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi April 16, 2025 If you go to the Greater Good Magazine’s website, you’ll see the truth in spades. It is one of those “Let’s-all-feel-good-and-be-happy” publications directed at a readership of secular, consumerist, modish, and careerist types whose lives seem to be best represented by a Smiley-Face button. The magazine’s subtitle (“Science-Based Insights for a Meaningful Life”) is the sort of description that is already intellectually grating. As for examples of the kind of things discussed, try these: Share Your Feelings Go Offline Decluttering Your Life Healthier Food Choices There’s even this one, that really set my teeth on edge: “Poetry for kinder communities.” Good swiving grief! Let’s write poetry so that we can all be pleasant and well-adjusted and kind to each other? Is that what they want us to do? Quite frankly, for this magazine and its clientele human life seems to be all about getting comfortable and secure, maintaining health, and congratulating oneself on having always made the right choices for those goals. Their evaluation of poetry appears solely based on how the art might be useful for maintaining one’s brain function, and having “increased positive social interactions.” In other words, poetry is just another useful anodyne to keep your optimum body weight and complacency. Is this really what the magnificent and ancient craft of poetry is about? Making yourself a happy and well-adjusted consumer in a materialist society, and being with the in-crowd who all look and feel good? Reply
Evan Mantyk April 16, 2025 Thank you, Clive. I found this interesting. I tend to have a very open mind about science, including the Mozart Effect and many other observable though often not repeatable phenomena. It would not surprise me if someone calming their minds down and listening to something narrative that is connecting them to another human being had some observable positive effects, but would it really match up against some placebo? The line that lumps together “Alfred Tennyson or Naomi Shihab Nye” is particularly telling. Nye’s work is not particularly good and cannot be placed next to Tennyson in my opinion. It would be interesting to me if someone studied the effects of good classical poetry versus more modern verse. Reply
Margaret Coats April 17, 2025 Yes, thank you, Clive–and thank you, Evan, for directing the discussion to the topic, rather than to the article and author whose pretensions we may not share, or to sponsors and funding. Health is in fact something that transcends scientific measurement, which is why individual, “anecdotal” information is important. No prescription benefits everyone equally anyway. I’ve never considered whether poetry is good for health, but it has long been so much a part of my life that I would be distressed (and maybe less physically healthy) without it. The effect, as Evan suggests, comes from poetry I relish as good, which is always classical in some sense. I am interested in the points drawn out from the article that have to do with the nature of aesthetic pleasure as “liking” rather than “wanting.” This implies that poetry is available and beneficial in a broad sense that might tend to calmness and charity as well as to the clarity in judgment needed when those higher virtues are less suited to needs of the moment. Worth further consideration. Reply
Susan Jarvis Bryant April 17, 2025 What an interesting discussion – a subject I come to with an open mind. Poetry has benefited me in many ways. It has lifted my spirits. It has soothed me. It has educated me. It has entertained me. And it has flown me across an ocean to a beautiful life brimming with the wonder of poetry. I adore poetry because I am human, and art is integral to being human. Life is richer because of poetry. These are my personal thoughts, for what they are worth. This is where I feel the problem lies. The act of studying or promoting poetry as a health benefit – especially when it’s funded or sanctioned by government agencies – raises significant questions about freedom of expression and who gets to decide which voices are heard. And in today’s world of censorship, this study proves that poetry has become another tool for control, rather than a space for self-expression and resistance to the social “norms” set by the very people paying for those studies. When any research is filtered through official channels or paid for by public funds, we risk losing the freedom that makes poetry powerful. What does “therapeutic” and “healthy” poetry look like? Obviously, those who are paid a handsome sum to tell us will know. But even if they’re not paid, the type of poetry that’s healthy is purely subjective. Satirical poetry challenges the status quo. The powers that be find it offensive for obvious reasons. I am tempted to write a satirical poem on this propagandist quote from the article: A poem that praises the virtue of “sticking out,” “Identity” tends to resonate with middle schoolers, who frequently chafe against pressure to conform to expectations during adolescence. Students facing this struggle for acceptance can feel affirmed by the speaker’s endorsement of individuality, even when uniqueness runs counter to popular visions of beauty or correctness. This article has an agenda that is evident – an agenda designed to silence speech that’s uncomfortable for the chosen few. Freedom of expression means defending the right to write – and that includes writing about subjects that make us feel uncomfortable. I have no problem with people seeking “higher virtues” through poetry. I have a problem when those “higher virtues” are forced upon poets and readers in the interest of promoting an ideology – the very thing poetry should be able to rail against. Reply
Mike Bryant April 17, 2025 Susan, you’re absolutely right… I am thrilled that poetry brought us together. We met on a poetry site! Poetry has been great for me and my brain health because I found you! Yes, poetry and creative endeavors are great for many reasons. But, as for the creeps that believe they have all the answers… do we really want these ”affirmers” of “identity” in our schools reading poetry to our children as they gaze into their eyes and take notes? Do we want ideologues choosing which poems they, or we, are permitted to read? Do we want these ideologues to perform brain therapy, biblio or otherwise, on our children or on us? Poetry is not about creating “positive social interactions.” Poetry challenges, disturbs, and rattles cages. The greatest poems often leave us uncomfortable and questioning, not just “happy and well-adjusted.” Poetry isn’t meant to make us more functional workers with “healthier coping mechanisms” – it’s meant to connect us with truth, beauty, and the full range of human experience, including the difficult parts. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi April 17, 2025 You’ve zeroed in on the problem, Susan. When any agency or institution or bureaucracy or cult or medical combine involves itself with a human activity, that activity is subtly regulated at first, and heavily regulated eventually. Today, the word “health” (or that absolutely horrid synonym, “wellness”) has become a talismanic icon, and anything that claims to preserve it or promote it carries a pseudo-religious mandate. Combine this health mandate with the more openly political mandate for ideological conformism as dictated by our Deep State, and you have a set of shackles to control the population in the name of “science” and “virtue.” The COVID hysteria was a flagrant instance of this tendency. We make poetry to please ourselves, and we also hope that it may be pleasing to others. But when someone comes along and tells us that poetry is “good for our health and our social adjustment” only if it is made in certain ways and in accord with certain ethical or doctrinal precepts, then it is our task as poets to tell that person to bugger off. Reply
James Sale April 17, 2025 I just love those turns of phrase that Joe comes up with: ‘bugger off’. Perfect. Yep, I get it. It’s all about half-truths, isn’t it? Who could argue with reading more? But then, what kind of poets? Two thirds of those cited I’d never heard of, and so I am almost certain a diet of pernicious, modernist, pointless literature: just as poetry can enable your health – Apollo was the god poetry and health – so too can ‘crap’ (sorry, I slipped into Joe-mode!) poetry endanger it. So much pseudo-science: let’s rediscover the sublime; recommend it, and as we can write-top-notch stuff! Reply
Joseph S. Salemi April 17, 2025 I learned the expression “to bugger off” from a Monty Python film. When I visited England, I found out from some Brits what the verb “bugger” actually meant. Reply
Brian Yapko April 17, 2025 An interesting article and equally interesting commentary. I intuitively recoil from articles of this nature because they smack heavily of that same atheist agenda that directs us to look for the evolutionary basis of love and altruism in anthropology and the environmental pressures faced by our paleolithic ancestors. The mindset behind this type of analysis presupposes that every aspect of human existence is scientifically verifiable and, further, tells us that there is nothing which is not negotiable — whether that means changing a person’s gender to eugenics to approving the composting of human bodies. To reduce the value of the very concept of art to whether or not it yields a measurable result is interesting from a mechanistic standpoint but appalling to those who believe in the soul. When spiritual components to the subject – whether love or poetry or music or whatever – are dismissed as unworthy of even passing consideration as part of an analysis of the subject, I see a red flag. Whether this is done by direct denigration versus simple omission does not matter. The agenda becomes clear. “Science-based insights for a meaningful life.” This is an obvious advocacy for atheism. Fair enough, if that’s your thing. But let’s not ignore that this agenda is a barely-veiled foundation for this article. It is yet another attempt to unweave the rainbow to provide a respectable scientific “cover” to someone who can’t abide the idea of spiritual component to the creation and appreciation of poetry. The idea of putting poetry on the same level as a love of cinnamon rolls and the desire for a dopamine hit depresses me. Then, there is this sentence: “Poetry therapy is apt for giving voice to and constructing meaning from core metaphors patients hold about their lives…” I see. Poetry is acceptable because it offers a scientifically unembarressing way of acknowledging faith. So long as it’s regarded as metaphor. Again, a defensible position I suppose. But it’s no wonder we live in the most depressive age in the history of humanity. I prefer to get my psychological insights from Jung rather than Freud. And I suggest the faith-averse author of this article read The Meaning of Life by Viktor Frankl. We are more than our measurable reactions and life is more than how our vital signs and “happiness index” are affected by various stimuli. In my personal view, poetry is a good and noble thing which makes humanity better and whose quality and quantity strikes me as a meaningful indicator of the health of its representative culture. In the end it doesn’t even matter where we may happen to fall on the faith spectrum. if we’re doing it for the dopamine hits rather than to fuel the exploration of the world, the exploration of the heart or the exploration of the soul – well then something is deeply wrong. Reply
Paul A. Freeman April 18, 2025 Not wishing to get into the science or politics debates, for me, finding a well-written poem, usually about nature or something topically funny, I find mentally soothing. Occasionally, a one-off poet submitting at the SCP leaves a gem and is never heard of again, reminding us that all is not so bleak out there. For instance, some of the SCP 2024 International high school poetry competition winners had a thoroughly positive outlook on ageing that I found so refreshing. I enter a monthly poetry competition and have recently tried to keep things light. From the comments received, although its a small gesture, it is much appreciated. In Britain, there’s a poet called Brian Bilston, who some might condemn as being too left for their liking. However, it being International Haiku Poetry Day, yesterday (enough to put some in a bad mood), he posted a selection of humorous haikus, one of which was: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Alright – Thou art pretty hot. As they say – ‘laughter is the best medicine’. Oh, and on the subject of physical health, when running up hill in Abu Dhabi, or when swimming the last eighteen lengths (laps) of my 50, I will recite the opening lines of Chaucer’s general prologue to chivvy me on and keep them memorised. And when we finish writing a poem, don’t we all get that buzz, that natural high? Okay, that’s my tuppence worth. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi April 18, 2025 Well, good poetry makes all of us feel good, there’s no arguing with that. And Bilston’s haiku is really funny. Reply
