In the latest Newsweek online, Patti Davis (daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan) writes an article comparing the lives of Michael Jackson and Judy Garland: <link>

Near the end of the article (drawing on an interview with Lorna Luft re Garland for Davis's new book, The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us), Davis says:

Therein lies the biggest danger of a life lived in so much brightness, with so many eyes watching—the fragility of a human being gets overlooked, even disregarded. Artists—true artists who arrive on this earth bearing gifts that make the rest of us stand in awe—often don't have tough skins and well-honed survival skills. They don't have the stamina of warriors, they have the souls of poets. And that makes them easy prey.

Hm. I hear a myth being reified here, or attempting to be, or just glibly drawn on. Is this a notion grounded selectively or warrantedly? I don't myself see "the souls of poets" as being antithetical to stamina or survival skills, or being "easy prey" in the senses of 'tossed about by fame and overmanagement' as Davis argues applies to both her subjects. Yes, there are cases of poets seemingly storm-tossed and perhaps 'tortured' to the point of too vulnerable or too desperate for escape from their pain, arguably a function of their sensitivity (e.g., Plath), but is this a defining feature of poetic souls? Is this just a variation on the tired saw that writers need to be alcoholic, depressed, and/or down on their luck in order to find their inner storying brilliance?

Zinya,

I think Michael Jackson and Judy Garland may have suffered from a similar profound dis-ease, but was that dis-ease specifically what is assumed to be the soul of the poet: fragile, vulnerable and possessing an other-worldly knowing? Prone to depleting fits of emotion?

These and other descriptives of 'tortured soul' can be used to depict some of the many women and men I've met (and many of whom I've known well) in my 24 years in AA. Women and men whose hearts broke easily, women and men whose sagacious insights troubled them, people who acted in relationships alternately as napalm or kites. The high-strung sentients weren't poets or artists of any kind. They've been school teachers, business owners, clergymen, cashiers in Walmart, lawyers and antique dealers to name a few vocations. In fact, in the nineties, I ran around with a small group of AA friends who both wrote and read poetry and none of whom were overly troubled by themselves.

I'm certain there are tender, vulnerable souls in the world, probably right here in my family. But I think they don't only nor primarily animate the persons of poets. Maybe it's just easy to credit artistic success with interior sensitivity then blame artistic sensitivity as the cause of the artist's collapse.

Zinya, I think good writers and poets and musicians have somethings. Not necessarily the same somethings and not necessarily trouble.

monica

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Reagan just makes a fool of herself by comparing apples and oranges.

Sweetly so.

What she fails to acknowledge,

is that after decades of very serious drug abuse,

even warriors can no longer be warriors.

And at no time in their life ,

despite being talented and loved,

was Garland or Jackson that.

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Artists — true artists who arrive on this earth bearing gifts that make the rest of us stand in awe — often don't have tough skins and well-honed survival skills. They don't have the stamina of warriors, they have the souls of poets. And that makes them easy prey.

Phooey (or however it's supposed to be spelled).

None of us is born with "tough skins and well-honed survival skills." It's something we learn. I think Garland and Jackson had skills honed enough to survive for a long time in an entertainment business that eats people alive. However, both were child stars, and I think that led to an adult life where they might have confused self-indulgence with a return to childhood.

Bob Dylan manages to be pretty creative w/o being "easy prey."

As for Reagan's dichotomy between the stamina of warriors and the souls of poets -- I don't see it. Over the last several months, I've come to appreciate the work ethic of people like Robert Pinsky as well as the other poets who post here, teach, write poetry, raise a family, do poetry readings, pay the mortgage, etc.

And what about that tired saw zinya mentions -- those brilliant, depressed alcoholic poets like John Berryman. They drag themselves out of bed every day, hung over and still depressed, sit down, and write poetry. That takes the stamina of warriors.

MA

Hi, zinya, I was just looking at a Newsweek article on-line, too, although not this one. I'll go back and take a look at the Garland-Jackson story.

In response to your question, I think "souls of poets" is a broad generalization and also a sign of sloppy writing. It is too easy to say "souls of poets" and kind of wrap the whole thing up when obviously the real answer is much more complex.

I'm making a broad generalization myself now, but do you think if you spent 15 minutes interviewing each of a roomful of people with some sort of improvised and spontaneous personality profile, you might be able to spot those with the so-called artistic temperament? I think I might be able to do it with a fair degree of accuracy based solely on appearance.

Herewith, the PPP (Poetic Personality Profile) test:

Bedhead or barbered?

Hand-painted tee-shirt with catchy phrase or black hoody?

Pajama bottoms or baggy jeans?

Handmade sandals or flip-flops?

Empty wallet or credit card?

Downtown apartment or suburban rental?

Painting/writing/shooting video or employed?

Hasn't had breakfast or leaving to get a cheeseburger?

(with apologies to two of my nephews who might be a tad bit embarrassed to realize they served as my prototypes -- hey, they're both great guys!)

zinya...

I think Patti is just saying she feels their pain. Or at least the pain and similarities she can identify with. And she should make it clear that she has no real idea what added pressures and self identity issues come with the ultra stratosphere-superstar worlds of which Judy or Micheal experienced. She is more in line with Luft by example as neither one of them were really ever magnified for their talent, just examined periodically because of their birth circumstances. She must write poetry and in some type of many various states of emotion identified her own soul as that of a poet. And as we all know, the souls of poets are only examined if they managed to get noticed. So I don't think it is so much an attempt to reify as it more just a false analogy. So definitely it is about new teeth for a tired saw.

But your point is about the mythical soul of poets, and is the notion warranted. I love to think that there is such a thing, and not just the tortured stereotype. Really good poetry seems to come from such a unique and powerful place, vibrant, and enduring. Pure Art. And what is interesting is that of the poetic souls of which we are so familiar many of them led lives that could sell tabloids as well as books.

Anyway, I believe that all souls are deep and full of insight and sensitivity and wonder about our surroundings. Poets, for whatever reason, were selected to describe that insight and sensitivity and wonder in marvelous little or not so little word structures. Not a calling, it seems, but a compulsion. Ultimately, I think the notion is warranted, but impossible to define.

Anyway, I believe that all souls are deep and full of insight and sensitivity and wonder about our surroundings. Poets, for whatever reason, were selected to describe that insight and sensitivity and wonder in marvelous little or not so little word structures. Not a calling, it seems, but a compulsion. Ultimately, I think the notion is warranted, but impossible to define.

Hi Nu,

I agree with everything you wrote up to this point. I don't think poets "were selected." I think they select themselves. Based on inclination, genes, brain hemispheres, nurturing, life experiences, etc., they become poets.

As for sensitivity and wonder about our surroundings, I think that that too is a choice. We can choose to not see our surroundings after a while, to toughen ourselves, or we can choose to remain open and alert to our surroundings, to remain vulnerable to emotions. And it's not only poets who consciously choose the latter.

MA

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Reagan just ...........

should read

Davis just................

As I was just deliciously

chastised by the woman I love...........lol

.

MA...

Well, I don't think it is a disagreement, per se, because the factors you attribute to causing a person to choose themselves to become a poet, inclination, genes, ect., can be said to add up to a compulsion. Perhaps selected was the wrong way of putting it as I don't mean to intend some outside force or design was responsible for the inclination. Having the compulsion myself I am tempted to call it a curse at times since I am under no obligation to write the stuff at all.

We might disagree a tad on whether one can choose to be sensitive or wonder too deeply about one's surroundings. I know lots of people who do not seem to wonder about the deeper meaning of their existence at all. They accept certain explanations and although they choose the most comfortable of those explanations, they are neither inclined nor seem capable of making any explanations themselves. And hardly any of them read poetry for fun. But they do react to things and at times have strong opinions and wonder aloud about what it all means. And that is that. I, on the other hand, always try to describe it and come to some kind of explanation or description. It feels like I can't choose to ignore it, like I have some primal need to strip it down. In any case, I don't see that these are clear choices. So in that sense I feel poetry chose me.

I will give you this though, if you mean that should one choose to occupy himself with matters of a sensitive nature or to speculate about the wonders of life, then he will choose a tool that will help him in that endeavor. I suppose in that sense it was I who chose poetry.

I will give you this though, if you mean that should one choose to occupy himself with matters of a sensitive nature or to speculate about the wonders of life, then he will choose a tool that will help him in that endeavor. I suppose in that sense it was I who chose poetry.

Ideally, Nu, I think one can choose to remain wondrous as a child, to feel as much joy and pain from a third love as from the very first. I don't know if one necessarily needs a tool for that, but I do find that reading poetry reminds me of that ideal I set for myself. And yet I remain firmly committed to my decision to refrain from writing poetry. However, I don't think everyone who goes through life open to its pains and pleasures necessarily needs to read or write poetry.

I'm not convinced that all artists have an uncontrollable self-destructive urge. I do wonder, however, why it's true of so many artists, particularly of my own time, whose work actually interests me.

Yes, MA, as an ideal I believe also that one can choose to remain wondrous and open to all that comes along the path and never feel the need shape it into a physical form. Although I do believe you have a poetic soul if such a thing does exist, perhaps in the sense that you try to keep that ideal alive. I read this morning that John Updike was a lifelong golfer and thought to myself perhaps that is why he didn't seem to take poetry so seriously. Or did he? A lifelong hacker myself I've had many moments out on the course that have challenged my stamina to remain serious in the face of adversity. And I have met many a man or woman out there who see in that frustrating pastime a good lesson in dealing with the limitations of ability. It's hard to hide your inner demons from playing out on your face, but you learn to control them, and it seems to build optimism. 18 chances to start over again....sorry for the tangent. Fore!

I am not sure we can attribute one single cause as the reason that some in the Arts have died young at their own hands. It depends, in part, upon the circumstances present in the life of each.

Some, Like Michael Jackson and Judy Garland reached "stardom" at a very young age. And I wonder that living a life of "adulation", the loss of "childhood" or the failure to mature in a normal fashion didn't contribute to their inability to psychologically adapt to events in their later life.

The music industry placing a whole new set of pressures on the successful performer - like the oft mentioned "sex, drugs and rock & roll". There have certainly more than a few who have succumb to drug over-doses - intentional or otherwise. And for some, their fading popularity after being treated as "pop gods" can be a depressing situation.

Writers, especially some poets, seem to suffer a combination of these flaws. Certainly there are those who feel things very deeply - and live a life on an emotional roller coaster. Some painters, like Van Gogh and Jackson

Michael Jackson, Jack Kerouac, Charlie Parker, Sylvia Plath, Jimi Hendrix, and the lot died of causes that had nothing to do with the fact that each of them had varying degrees of talent. People die daily who haven't distinguished themselves as singers, dancers, writers, poets, jazz improvisers; they drank themselves to death, they overdosed, they committed suicide due to untreated clinical depression, they were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. No one, though, latches on to a single name of the average anonymous drug casualty or suicide and speculates as to the nature of the sad, early death, no one really wonders about the soul of the everyman that just might be too sensitive to deal with the harsh facts of life and is driven to end the endless pain.

Rather, we shrug, we say”ain't that shame" and then go about our business, mildly annoyed. We love celebrity hood, though, we are obsessed with as a culture, and indeed celebrity has become our religion--we create a mythology about the doings of the famous Gods and wonder about their inner lives, their moods, their ability to cope .

Patti Davis, something of a famously failed artist/writer herself, picks up one of the stalest clichés around, the most exhausted of all tired tropes, the most insipid of perspectives by wondering aloud if there is something in the tortured psyches that compels the brilliant and the intensely gifted to short circuit themselves and bring an end to their lives. It's awful enough that Davis speaks so insipidly about the blunt matters of death, but it is also aggravating she's given such a big microphone from which to entertain her morbid hero worship

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Burke and Bingo ! Or was it Bingo and Burke ?

　

And out from the crowded and dimly lit basement of the old church

a familiar voice screamed bingo and a man stood up waving his arms

and by god it was the old man ted burke the notorious poet , and of course

he had won first prize again.

All the others began to collect their things and put on their coats,

for it was the last game of the night and burke would once again

win the grand prize of a free pancake breakfast at Tiny’s Diner down the block

where anybody who had any sense years ago stopped going .

But Burke was a man who was born hungry .

And he would again wait for the sun to rise

and get him some pancakes with blueberries and cream on top.

And simultaneously he would begin to daydream

about all the women that he's ever loved.

It’s really the only way you can eat Tiny’s pancakes

with a smile on your face.

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