In this report we find poets die younger than other writers.
"On average, poets lived 62 years, playwrights 63 years, novelists 66 years and nonfiction writers lived 68 years," Kaufman said in an interview conducted by e-mail.Well that's it. I'm never writing a friggin' poem again. Not that I ever wanted to be a poet. I want to be a mentally stable non-fiction writer and live forever. :)
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.
So when a budding novelist dies young, few people may notice.
- Art Neuro