My life as a poet changed dramatically in 1999 when Psychiatric Times founder John L. Schwartz, MD, and editor Christine Potvin decided to include my poems as a monthly column in Psychiatric Times. With the creation of “Poetry of the Times,” I experienced a tremendous jolt of artistic energy, a sense of affirmation, and a huge boost in confidence. Writing the column continues to propel my poetry 10 years later.

But I did have one moment of doubt. . . .

On the eve of publication of the first poem, I realized that more than 43,000 colleagues in psychiatry and the allied mental health professions would be able to read my poetry and consider whatever the poems might reveal about me. As you might imagine, I felt exposed and vulnerable. Fortunately, my anxiety was unnecessary; your support and resonance with the poems has been one of the most gratifying aspects of the column. Over the years, your e-mails, letters, and personal words of encouragement have been heartwarming, and knowing that the poems touch your personal and professional lives in a meaningful way continues to be an important source of motivation for me. I have also appreciated the many opportunities you have created for me to speak at medical school grand rounds, literary events, and psychiatric residency training programs around the country. It has been a pleasure to meet so many wonderful colleagues and to have the opportunity to learn more about the poems as you share your insights with me.

Knowing I would have a column to fill each month provided a huge motivation to be disciplined about my writing. Over time, I produced a body of work, and in 2002 my first collection of poems, How JFK Killed My Father, won the Pearl Poetry Prize and was published by Pearl Editions—a literary press. The poems explore my relationship with my father, who suffered with chronic autoimmune disease, and how his illness affected him, our family, and my career as a physician. To continue to honor my father’s memory and to encourage the creative efforts of young writers the way Psychiatric Times had fostered my own writing, I used the Pearl Poetry Prize money to establish and fund the Gerald F. Berlin Creative Writing Prize for medical students, residents, nursing students, and graduate students at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The award is designed to stimulate our colleagues in training to reflect on their experiences by writing poetry and essays. The award process also encourages student writers to try on the identity of poet and writer. Their stunning poems and essays are available on my Web site www.richardmberlin.com.

Come out come out, wherever you are!

I know you’re out there . . . you cloistered and cantankerous, poetic youth.

I can hear your fingers tip, tap, typing and pens a scritch, scratch, scrawling across paper, cigarette packs, your arms, even brick walls; whatever surface will act as canvas to your perfunctory, spontaneous and as the kids all say these days, “RANDOM” musings.

Philosophical epiphanies within idle chitchat, ironic truths witnessed at a social gathering and beautiful statements sung by your own hearts. Yes, you’re poets and you know it . . . all of you. Whether you like to write corny love poems, limericks or haikus, lyrics for a song or two or maybe you can rap like no other sister or brother can do. Maybe you storytell, or maybe you’re a comedian even though perhaps, the only one laughing, is you.

Maybe you consider yourself more of a “serious writer of prose” and maybe all of the above or none of the above. Perhaps something else that nobody knows. But you’re all poets whether you’ll admit it or not.

The reason simply put, is that poetry is not a product . . . necessarily. There’s no cookie cutter format that you can apply to explain what it is.

What distinguishes human beings more than anything is their use of language. And literature matters profoundly because it is a central example of the use human beings make of words to explore and understand all experience. Great writers work at the frontiers of language. They are deeply engaged with the struggle for clarity and meaning. Because they wrestle with and refine language in order to be lucid and expand the imagination they are, in the most crucial sense, guardians of the accumulated richness of our written and spoken inheritance. And if a nation forgets or neglects such an inheritance its soul dries up, however great its material success.

If language becomes separated from moral and emotional life – if it becomes just a trail of clichés or a parade of dull practicalities which fail to quicken and excite the mind of the reader – then we run the risk of depriving citizens and children in particular of the full and vital resources contained in language.  Ezra Pound pointed out long ago that literature, among other things, is a way of keeping words living and accurate. It is the essential place of literature to restore in us a sense of exuberance and vitality and excitement and passion in the acquisition of language and in the power and savour of words.

“Start making sense. Disjunction is dead. The fragment, which ruled poetry for the past one hundred years, has left the building. Subjectivity, emotion, the body, and desire, as expressed in whole units of plain English with normative syntax, has returned.

“But not in ways you would imagine. This new poetry wears its sincerity on its sleeve . . . yet no one means a word of it. Come to think of it, no one’s really written a word of it. It’s been grabbed, cut, pasted, processed, machined, honed, flattened, repurposed, regurgitated, and reframed from the great mass of free-floating language out there just begging to be turned into poetry.

If you’re a writer, chances are, at one time or another you’ve dabbled in poetry. Whether it was through personal journal entries or a passion-penned piece to a loved one.

And though you may not have the makings of Barrett-Browning or Poe, you can make extra cash. With ease!

One of the secrets to longevity in the writing business is definitely diversification.

To this end, poetry provides a painless way to keep the creative juices and the cash flowing. Especially when you consider that an 8 line submission of verse can yield a quick $200.00 from a greeting card publisher! In addition to complimentary cards and your name credited on the product.

“O muses, O high genius, aid me now”

Did you ever wonder where a poem comes from or how is it born? Many poets believe that their words are not theirs alone, but involve the work of a muse (from the Greek mousa, which literally means song or poem). Originally, the muses were any of the nine sister goddesses in Greek mythology who presided over song, poetry and the arts and sciences.

The nine use goddesses were Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (love poetry and lyric art), Euterpe (music, especially flute), Melpomene (tragedy), Polymnia (hymns), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy) and Urania (astronomy). The muses were seen as, the source of inspiration for writing poetry and it was they who guided the poet and formed his or her words.