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At this time we bring you another in our continuing series of rebroadcast of W N Y C's award winning program narcotics and narcotic addiction today's program concerns itself with helping the ex addict through poetry therapy drug addiction is not a problem that unique to New York City but like many things about New York it's bigger and in this case not necessarily better to understand some of the origins of the problem and what's being done and can be done to alleviate it your city station is presenting a week long series on drug addiction addicts doctors social workers therapists and members of the city's Addiction Services Agency or participating in the series today we have Dr Jack Levy author of poetry thirty in our studios along with some other guests Dr Levy is associate attending psychiatrist at the Cumberland hospital here now to introduce Dr Levy is program manager of W. N.Y.C. Mr Richard Pyatt. Welcome to another one of the discussions that we've been having all week long on drugs and the related problems of drug addiction Our panel is represented by Dr Jack Jay leading editor of the book poetry therapy which was published recently by live in cut company he's an associate attending psychiatrist at the Brooklyn Cumberland Medical Center and director of the poetry therapy workshop of growth which stands for group relations ongoing workshops also on the panel is Dr Eric MARGAN Now one of his many affiliations is the director of the addiction worker's training program of grow Elizabeth Fair who's a poetry therapist at the post-graduate Center for Mental Health and she's also an assistant director of poetry therapy workshop grow. We also have on the staff Dr Cynthia challenge who is an assistant professor of English at Queensboro community college at Bayside and Dr A blind and professor of English the agricultural and Technical College at the New York State University Farmingdale And we welcome this distinguished panel. To distinguished subject because I think many people probably and I'm going to make a lame as a guest Dr Levy down through the years of individuals who might have felt depressed one day. Might have picked their favorite book from the shelf or maybe their favorite passage from one of Shakespeare's sonnets and read it and then all of a sudden felt a little better maybe. This is a primitive. Idea I'm sure of what we're going to be talking about and one thing before I ask you to give us a frame of reference is just recently we've always been familiar with the dial a prayer that you can find in the newspapers but now they have something called Dial a poem and only the other day a mother said to me I dialed a poem and all I got was obscenities. I want I will ask you about thought of the later but first of all poetry therapy as an added dimension in treating our conduct attics is a unique and tremendously fascinating subject and of itself what frame of reference can our listeners bring to this what's the background the historical background of this particular therapy method. Well actually it goes back to the Bible where many of the songs have been used for over five thousand years to help alleviate depression to relieve anxiety and to give some focus to help in the solving of certain emotional conflicts Well what does it consist of I mean someone here some poetry may feel better well actually as divide into two parts one as the added dimension aside from psychotherapy individual and group and medications and the various a vocational rehabilitation music therapy we're now going to do sing the techniques of one encouraging the narcotic Addicks to write poems about their dreams fantasies relationships to mother father wife and other members and relatives of the family also to write poems about some of their conflicts and their symptoms and their pushers and the second is the other added dimension in the psycho therapist bringing in poems that seem to coincide with the mood and problems on the addict productively. How does this differ if it does from a person undergoing therapy of some kind of making baskets or. Putting constructing. Projects of some cotton What is the difference here is there a difference well the important thing is that many things can be expressed in poetry that cannot be expressed face to face the poetry of man's deepest motions and in itself the expression of these feelings that comes through poetry are therapeutic. In fact some of the psychotherapists actually assign their attics to bring in a poem a week saying previously many of the people in psychotherapy used to bring in poems and these factors were not emphasized and that is our aim to alert the members of the mental health professions. To give importance to the homes of the attic Well these poems in order to be successful in this for this therapy to be successful is it necessary for the poems to be written by the addict's for example or can it be poems by other authors both of these techniques are used I want to emphasize that the aesthetic qualities of the poem are not important in other words a so-called mediocre poem that is not included in anthologies made me very therapeutic whereas some of the master poems might not be appropriate or actually might be contraindicated Well poetry often is difficult to understand even if you. Want to understand I mean I can think of the classroom situations in college and within reach or it can barely get the point across in the student's never get the blind and how is it that an addict can derive this kind of emotional impact from poetry because as I say often time the addicts are unable to vocalize some of their deep feelings and we all are unable to vocalize our deep feelings but we find that. They're able to do it through poetry if we use for example in a group the so-called round robin technique saying that at this table here say we're writing a poem. About. Mr Piatt for example and so we go around I would write one line I'm often used to say something to me in these discussions so I can always go like you know in this technique that somebody would write down and I would write one line about you I think about if you sat up in the I'm not sure which way the wind is blowing. And we might not be able to use it I mean yeah but. When I get up I would really not mean it right one for me I mean Professor blending would write one line and but a fair one line and actor Morgan I mean that would be one verse and then go around twice and then you would write one line about yourself and then you'd be surprised what kind of on the line now when you say you would write one line are you talking about verse lines are you talking about a simple phrase that one writes doesn't have to be structured along some pattern and some meter to be spontaneous we don't have to structure it. In the beginning other words in it may not rhyme it's preferably free verse at this time. It may be a phrase it may be a word it may be a fantasy and maybe a thought but when it gets down on paper and seems to have an impact in other words we were able to put together these various abstract thoughts let's do it I mean just as an example I like to me let's let's pretend that your heroine addict All right. We can do that and that you take. Say what ten I cry yourself. I'm not going to you know I have an expensive habit. Than all I stuck to challenge to to write it down because the line as we say it and then. I for example I'll start I would say that you've been an addict for what for five years or in say five years I mean isn't it a steal when you. I'm stealing just to try to keep my hobby I don't have and. This is a fictitious setting listeners I mean I was I'm not. But now what happens now and I we go we'll go around clockwise everybody in the panel writing one line up was write a book and you write a line about yourself I do it first we could start No I mean I mean I said I don't want let's start with you and your fine and then I want me to start yes which is dying. I wish we could cut down. His bags per day at least by one this is the greatest wish I can think of under the sun I think if he could will himself to do it he would then become productive every organism are going to. Would he do it is not the question but rather whether he wishes he could then we come to Elizabeth. If only that dreadful feeling would stay away. And doctor of London. I might find peace at least for a day. When we come back to Dr Levy Well at this point we would have the recorder read the poem and then. I think the addict you would begin to get certain feelings and fantasies about the Common and other members of the panel of the group if this were a poetry therapy group or a group therapy session so let's have a doctor challenge you like I bragging and that's what I think we should point out Dr lady for going to the audience that this is being a simulated time my situation and I see intensity a right of the thought has been diminished and we are dealing with more or less a frame structure is a fame or a getting an idea. If you will have to fill in what I wasn't able to get at I wish we could cut down his bags per diet least by one this is my greatest wish under the sun I think that if he would will it he could what he did what is not the question I mean whether he wishes he could but whether he wishes he could if only that dreadful feeling would go away and then I lost the ground conclusion I'd have some peace at least for a day. And I'm good now is this a poem read. That it strikes certain chord so you get certain feelings certain fantasies certain he dreams ideas yes. But suppose the poem is inaccurate in some crucial way what I'm suggesting is that. The happy could get rid of this awful feeling sort of there was a lot of an awful feeling like it and that is not an awful feeling let's say. Where what I'm thinking about the feeling is great well. But we're talking about the feelings just prior you get a fix. In that mine and I hope that by then OK so you have this structure and then you would work with this with the patient for a while and he was right he would sort of say But how does this really help well he would be in the vocalize his feelings about the poem and that yeah I lied to him right and then other members of the group would also who are also perhaps some of them at age two and thereby For example why don't you try to get some expression I'm certain your feelings fantasies to the poem that was read to you Well I'm happy to see that I think that it's a good idea I I don't the problem is it is so difficult because I don't have the problem. To I could simulate him but I think. Let me by way of interrogation move a little more. Toward it because. For example when they're using other poetry I mean for example there's a release here about mental patients help by poetry and therapists say people can relate to use a version that says emotionally disturbed patients are now being treated by Emily Dickinson Lord Byron and Robert Louis Stevenson. Where is the correlation of the relationship of of the two the person to the patient in these verses of these various poets whether the idea is to get the right poem for the right patient safety and recourse the difference between the right word and almost the right word is like the difference between lightning and I like what I see for example the there's been a statement that things can be said face to face using poetry that cannot be said using prose standardly what would that be what could you say to someone I mean what is it that can be said. Like what could not be said face to face for example by way of an example where there are many addicts who might hesitate in bringing up certain problems in regard to mother that. They may have guilt about in vocalizing but they could write it down on paper I say. Then you make it all of you make it sound so simple. Then that's all there is to it well that's just one thank you. What's the rest maybe a doctor blind and how do you work I mean do you use this in your classes at college at all you know I don't use it in that sense because I'm not a part of the poetry therapy group so to speak but I would say this that many years ago I did some research is on the Navajo Indian and his method of therapy and he would use a saying doctor that is if I were ill depressed melancholy I'd ask the same doctor to visit me if I were a rich man I get five seeing doctors a poor man I get one sing Dr he come into my wigwam and he would reciting poetry to the a complement of music and a lot of the poetry would pertain to the history of the tribe its more race its tribulations all of the sorrows that this tribe went through and by the time I got through singing about these things I'd be very happy and I don't know how true this is Dr Levy might bear me out as a psychiatry so many people have stated that the Navajo has no psychiatric symptoms are at least it seems to be free of all this after this therapy which is a kind of poetry therapy as I see it and I'm I became interested in this and I'm doing a study of shamans in medicine which number after and all that to see how these people used poetry for these self-same purposes but as for my own utility of this method. I'm. About to use some of these techniques after I would become a little more. Knowledge of the market Well let me ask you this yes you know we seem to be talking about very short range diversion. Someone can be diverted from the problem by solving a pleasant song emotional but the next day the problem comes back again and what about this doctor. In this kind of a situation is and how long. Of a therapeutic period is required to let's say concentrating on the addict. To divert him. And control his situation for you know a past week or a day well you know the treatment for an excess sometimes takes many years and. For example at the mental hygiene clinic at Cumberland hospital where we did have a poetry therapy group. Certain poems did in some cases stimulate them to more constructive action feelings whereas other techniques failed me the more traditional methods. Did not seem to work and this was an added dimension but in some cases it stimulated them to constructive action would you say. This is a very flimsy. Connective idea but I wonder if there isn't a connection that if your theory is true. As you've been describing it. Would this mean that. Individuals who are extremely creative and who can write and really create poetry books and anything else would be. They wouldn't really have a mental problem or a psychological problem and if they were addicts they wouldn't be addicts. If they had this problem I mean if they had this ability but we do find that as emotional conflicts are conquered the creativity is increased and also it seems that those people who are poets. Do have seem to have some difficulty with poetry therapy because of the aesthetic quality. Same with a an artist who goes into art therapy may have a similar problem but we did for example and one of the chapters in the book poetry therapy Dr Hitchings. Like Dr challenger could read a few lines play for example from the prophet that was somewhat helpful Well let's do that. With an archive not any. Where is this from that's from the book part of it's this is a quotation from the prophet by Kali Olga Braun and a man said Speak to us of self-knowledge and he answered saying your heart's now in silence the secrets of the days in the nights by you ears thirst but your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge you would know one words that which you have always known and thought you would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams and it is well you showed the hidden wellspring of your so must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea and the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes but that there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure and seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff of sounding. For self is the sea about endless and measureless say not I have found the truth but rather I have found a true say not I have found the path of the self so rather I have met the cell walking upon my path for the soul walks upon all paths the SO walks not upon a line neither does it grow like a reed the SO unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals Thank you. Dr Lee and Dr Teller if this does work this way why. Do not. Addicts or anyone else naturally and instinctively reach out for the Bible or Shakespeare or for any poetry I mean why don't they just do it in the solitude of the. Room and meditate and devour these ideas in words and come away Well I'm glad you asked that question because it is really our aim to. Stimulate the members of the mental health professions to encourage the attics to get back to some of the songs of the Bible which is a form of poetry. And to encourage them to write their feelings on paper. Because actually until recently. Poetry in psychotherapy. Was very uncommon so this now will fill a vacuum for example Elizabeth fair. Has been working with Addicks and using poetry successfully but until recently we hadn't heard too much about it she's always our aim to really stimulate psychotherapists and people working with antics to collar attention to this very valuable dimension which has been ignored these many years but what does this peculiar quality about. Poetry say I go with you say it hasn't been recognised until recently. What is the reaction of other. Institutions and groups regarding for example how would a methodology person react to the use of poetry for an addict where the method on individuals say well just give them this method on and they're going to be cured and controlled and everything else by just taking this and we don't have to go through this long drawn out period of psychotherapy I could say that one of our aims perhaps is to convert. A narcotic addict into a poetry addict. And also that they can get an L.S.D. experience through poetry without taking L.S.D. is that possible it's possible yes there was you can which good would you recommend. It's. The Robert Louis Stevenson the times. Emily Dickinson won't Whitman thank you very. Well in this very. This but. There's a poetry therapist as we mentioned earlier the Post Graduate Center for Mental Health an assistant director of the poetry therapy workshop grow in your direct work with. Patients do you also operate in the way that Dr Levy has just outlined is this the method of operation. I have to point out to you that everybody in poetry therapy does more or less their own flying and if you'd like to have a demonstration of my own thing why don't we use the round robin poem and I'll show you what I do. Thank you well here is a feeling expressed that someone wants to take less stuff and then the line about I wish that dreadful feeling would go what I. Through a poem like this everyone in the group of addicts could identify with that dreadful feeling that drives them towards the drug so they already have someone else to identify where. In other words it's already cut down their sense of isolation. It also gets them acquainted with the fact that the dreadful feeling does bring on the need for the drug what I would do with this in a group and find out what is this dreadful feeling what does it feel like one person will say it's a feeling of embarrassment someone else wants it's a feeling of dreadful fear while we go around and see what feeling this could play and see what the panel might think the feeling is we do that in the group and then we get the description of ten or twenty different feelings that create this drive towards the drug therapeutically it's valid because it gives the therapist an insight into what these people are feeling and then to remove the anxiety that brings on that specific feeling is that much easier because we already know what the feeling is whereas pop prior to this poem we had no conception of the feeling let's try going around and see what the feeling could be and you'll see that everyone would have a different one. How do we do that well what kind of feeling do you suppose that is or my feeling is that I have an interpersonal problem in I want to get rid of it. With a feeling of an I'm going to fight some way to get rid of another words you have a feeling of driven us. That drives you towards the drug Well no I mean I'm trying to get away from it now as I feel you know I don't want it all to tell them anymore. I have enough of it you want rid of the driven feeling that drives you towards it right the words that's true Dr Levy what would you like feeling I would like to I wish you would tell me what poems I could read to cut down the number of bags per day. Or how should I go about writing a poem or I was just going to help me. What feeling do you want to get out of feeling I want to get cured of my hair I want to big and I want through this poem I hear it but I get the feeling of desperation all right and you're feeling is that of desperation which drives you towards the drug What do you suppose the feeling is but I I would get a feeling I would want to know sort of the way Dr Levy has put it that what poems can I read that could give me the same feeling as the drugs that I'm using. Another words you want to know what that feeling is and what creates that feeling and you know what do you suppose the feeling I would imagine it would be anxiety and a sort of panic until you got the stuff when Yeah whatever it is your thoughts on it are on yes you want to get rid of your feelings of. What would you say it is that dreadful feeling I think you would be a feeling of. Embarrassment and self consciousness or fear of being rejected. In some kind of inferior sort of way so in other words we now have really five different feelings describe and each one of the addicts will be able to identify with at least one or more of these feelings and then we can have a group discussion what is it that makes you anxious what is a very embarrassing situation for you so that we if we take away these dreadful feelings from the patients they will need less stuff and ultimately none so this is where the poem becomes extremely therapeutic Well done this is why I want to ask you another question. Should directed to Dr Levy but collectively to everyone isn't if the appeal is basically emotional. And then consequently intellectual and and logical. Why isn't poetry just being used as a springboard to open up a conversation in other words if we sat around the table and asked the same questions without any regard to poetry. And I asked the same questions that was a third just out and we said well how do you what is it you would like what do you want I mean if it can be opened up as a confrontation a group therapy situation or. Where is the intrinsic and and in evidence of use of poetry here where the language is therapeutic. And these words live. In now in regard to the question. In the book there's a chapter that shows how a group of kids a friend exe would been ill six and more years at the mall on state hospital and had individual group psychotherapy medications electric shock treatments and all the other ancillary therapies. In the chapter. Three. Therapists show how in less than one year with the use of poetry therapy principles and techniques seven out of the eight out of the so-called hopeless kids from Next were discharged from the hospital. And they've been followed up and there they remain in the community so this is rather striking that the the language of the poetry is therapeutic. Has For example the addiction services agency of the city of New York been introduced to this idea we hope that after this broadcast they will be stimulated to explore the value of poetry in the total treatment plan or that it has the state narcotic commission been introduced to this idea. While having at one time worked for the state Iconix commission and one of their facilities. I don't know if they're conscious of whether or not they've been introduced to it. But they certainly have been introduced to it by Serapis who are on their staff. I think it's important to point out. That the use of poetry therapy. Or the uses of poetry therapy are as varied as the number of therapists who use it and each therapist who does use it. Brings to the the context of the therapeutic situation that he's regulating or that he's in engaged in his own feelings his own orientation towards the the model idea of poetry therapy and therefore what it may be for one therapist. Will be very different than what it may be for another therapist. For myself as a as a therapist working on having worked with that and. I think many of the points which you raise are very important. I myself do not see therapy poetry therapy as. A means in and of itself to accomplish cure. I look at it to some extent as you mentioned as a jumping off point. However as a very special jumping off point and it's its speciality. If terror has set your. Lies in the fact that. Addicts very often. Have I have problems in interpersonal relationships they as many other people do. But. Where is you and I may not have a problem just freely discussing a subject. Albeit a very personal subject. The addict will very often be hazard and reticent to to uncover feelings that he has. When you know face to face sort of situation this is one thing which he uses the drug for two to alleviate this anxiety. The poetry therapy or the use of poetry through her brain and then. Takes the form of presenting him with. A vehicle which is less threatening to him he is now dealing with. A more in Adam it kind of vehicle then what is what would be more blatantly his own feelings if we were just to discuss it and label it as that what is your feeling about such and such a thing. So that the. Use of the poetry or the eliciting of a a verse. And then takes on a much less threatening. Kind of situation for the addict. I think it's analogous someone had to the use of dreams using utilizing dreams in In Treatment and that we often refer to dreams as the road to the United conscious. The the the poetry verse very often when. Presented in a not threatening kind of situation can uncover for us a feeling which is possibly a little more. Camouflaged or covered and would not ordinarily come out and thus gives us an opening into an unconscious feeling i thought out of that very good summary of Dr Morgan how. Certain inescapable conclusions are that one might arrive and that is that. Well let me put it in the form of a question. Would you use a psycho dramatic technique to remove the person from the reality of the immediacy of the truth and. Thereby achieve the same. End In other words if a person is put into on the stage so to speak and he has an alter ego speaking the thoughts that the therapist thinks he should possibly be thinking or is thinking and he can put himself into this artificial situation this this. Maginot of situation would it matter whether you used poetry or whether you used dramatic situation it probably. Well that was again would depend on it on the patients certain patients respond to very different things I don't think there is a country indication or an indication for either one or the other they are just. An additional tools with which. The therapist can probe and can delve it's an added Arsenal for the therapist repertoire then going along with that theory but you say that. Each patient a narcotic in this case we're talking about narcotics addicts. Can be treated of a myriad number of ways depending on the therapist it would be the same I guess if we would if we every day met twenty narcotics addicts and as individuals we interrelated in communicated with them in twenty different ways based upon the background and experiences that would we would bring to bear in communicating the same way we do with individuals that we meet every day I talk to you and I talk to you in a different way than that I even hear almost We talk to each other differently because we're reprising the situation in the Person of the structure would this be the same situation than well it's somewhat similar I would say if we talked with twenty addicts and we use twenty different. Therapeutic my dollies. Any one of those. Patients might respond to let's say ten of them. Not necessarily all twenty of them. I think and another in another analogous sort of situation in our car Larry to it is the use of. For instance music and and song I'm talking about are from the standpoint of the lyric and the verse involved very often when I run a group with addicts I will start the group by having. The patients come for maybe five or six minutes. Invariably when you. When you interrupt the humming and you delve into what is actually being hummed. You will discover that specific songs are not just random sounds and noises and if you further pursue what what the melody is you want then of course ultimately I arrive at the lyric of this song and it's it's very interesting that if you then look at that lyric you will find that in most cases it will give you a clue to the mood that the patient is in. As you say before are jumping off point but which to then pursue the feelings not to market out of something I would ask you to comment I mean the entire panel to comment on in connection with something you said first of all I would have asked Dr Levy that are there significant. Trends significant symptoms or personality traits that would give you a accurate determination of which modality you might use to treat. Whether you should even need to bother to use poetry at all with some or whether you should use another method what what do you look for Dr Levy you know narcotic addict when you are trying to approach him and poetry doesn't work do you just throw him out and say you've got to go to the methadone people because I can't handle it. Well I want to emphasize that in the total treatment plan for the addict. Were enthusiastic about the use of individual and group psychotherapy about medications and. All the other ancillary therapies including using our dance occupational therapy. Vocational Rehabilitation. In regard to. The very same. Thems in narcotic I think there are certain poems. That have been found helpful for example depression for anxiety. Even for insomnia which is one of the great complaints of addicts. As I say it will be far better for them to resign some of these poems a thousand times than to take. An overdose of some of these senators that they often do and the many tranquilizers they do well Dr Levy are you being thoroughly open and honest when you say to repeat something a thousand times poem because if you repeat anything a thousand times when you're in bed the chances are high he will love yourself to sleep by the early boredom of it all actually idea and other words. Why a poem and what difference does it make because home seem to work if I can give you say I give you say the word laugh thousand times that'll work and that's not a poem but the poetry has concentrated emotional dynamite the simple words tonight I can give you a list of poems that have been found helpful for insomnia that might be worth trying for example well. Wordsworth and John Keats are written sonnets. Both call to sleep that's appropriate. For Henry words with Long Fellows him to the night. Or to him now the day is over. And the end of one if one were to read these if one had trouble falling asleep. And he would read or memorize them so that he could say them to himself give me their memorizing or light a candle on reading by can. I think I want to drive that you want to know why specifically poetry therapy just when we recognize the fact that repetition in of itself is a kind of dulling factor I mean one can go to sleep if one takes the energy in the time to to just say over the over the gate over the gate over the gate over the gate he thinks about that I think I imagine you could really fall off well. Getting away from the revolution which is only one of the questions you asked you asked it specifically generally why poetry therapy you couldn't art fair or P.R. music so therapy or drama therapy accomplish the same thing I would say from experience now I also do drama therapy a post-graduate center where the drama is a set down pattern of behavior that is then analyzed well acted out or whatever the poem as a purely emotional experience poetry is valid for everyone I don't know that it doesn't work with anyone ever. Because it appeals to the human being's emotions the human being that's troubled wants to be able to emote the poem doesn't for him the poet did it for him when he can discuss the poem he isn't really baring his soul completely but indirectly he is then saying the poet is trying to say and then what do you project as Certainly his own feeling at that point that I believe that's clear enough. Description and viewpoint Dr Who I mean I'd like to say something perhaps that relates to this but the Negro spiritual This is a hackneyed thought yet here are these depressed slaves singing over and over again these are spiritual biblical. Songs which seem to give them something to look forward to some hope and this is poetry and it had a special appeal to these people and I think I'm sure the Psalms do it to him is due to millions more so that there must be some peculiar. Benefit that poetry can offer to people who are depressed I'm speaking of course as a teacher of many years standing. I don't know whether this would have any bearing upon it but that all kinds of verbal communication are clues of course to what youngsters are suffering from and a composition I read about ten years ago a youngster said he loves to stand upon a hill during a snowstorm make a small start as snow snowball and have a catapult down the hill and destroy whole villages Well of course we had to refer this youngster and they found there were there was a problem now this of course is a symptom which is psychiatry's the psychologist we work with now if I'm going to injure me just get frightened by the on the other hand there was a young lady who said she had was one of twelve children destitute. She starving and I went around and got a collection about seventy five dollars from the teachers and I got an indignant letter from her mother and she's one of two children father is prosperous and she's play acting man therefore we fall into all kinds of traps you know teachers don't take these we never know sometimes and when they're serious when they're not but I can see that although this may not be related to poetry therapy I find that poetry does have a great deal of influence upon some kids if you know how to get to that same sense we are slightly away from the subject of a moment I would like to get the viewpoint of individuals like yourselves involved with poetry. At the moment because this is to a couple of months back when this program goes on here but there is quite to do about a poem which is apparently expressing an emotional. Feeling I'm talking about a poem that was written by a seventeen year old black student or at the time I think she was sixteen when she wrote it but it was being used in the Harlem on my mind you are being used in the preface to their book which is subsequently was taken out but this kind of poem or the feeling that is. Engendered by this poem. Is has a very strong influence apparently on a whole segment of the and ethnic group the poem was. Interpreted identified emotionally and I maybe I'm not questioning it I'm just saying what happened as an added Semitic poem and. I imagine it's something going to have that much of a negative. Result something could have that much using the same form possibly could have as much of a positive result I mean I think it would stand to reason well I think that I caught I mean as Claire almost anything can be used for good or evil when you see. It's to be that simple however and this may be therapeutic for this young negro poet who feels that she's being oppressed by say the Jewish people and people my own faith and I can understand what might have letter to write it and it may make her feel happy and not make me feel happy or but already people think intelligently about these things but this this is a hard problem with censorship and I think you have to make a distinction here between poetry for therapeutic purposes which hopefully would take place in a group situation with someone who knows what he's doing directing the whole situation in which case I would say fine you know you express any emotion you want here tell me you hate your mother or your father but please don't go home and kill either one of them you know hopefully you will just something constructive with this emotion it is an entirely different thing when you have a. Very public vehicle like a catalog to an exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum or a poem being were cited over W B A I thought it Leslie Campo I believe it was this is a different situation and it's therapeutic for Leslie Campo and say it's very bad for all the Jews who will listen this is negative poetry therapy for the Jews I suppose what you'd have to do is then have a jew get on W.B.I. are you know and have been acting a great poem and this sort of thing can go on but this is the wrong situation I think this is the whole thing this is not to be done public Admittedly we were off subject so I guess I just want to thank you thank you for that we go back to something Dr you know you're our go to market now so. I will make sure we do that I would like to stay with this just a second because it brings me to an important point. Germane to this and that is I think we have to distinguish between poetry and poetry therapy they are not wanted. The same thing and the I think the intrinsically important element in poetry therapy is that white and that which is done with what comes out of the poem it's not just the presentation of the poem although that may have some intrinsically therapeutic value too but as I see it as a therapist the therapy part of it is what is then done with the poem by the therapist and the others in the therapeutic situation whether it be other group members years or you know what about you mentioned something earlier talked about another I would want to just pick up in the last four minutes or so. In intriguing narcotic addicts you mentioned taking you begin some of your sessions with humming a note just one note this is long been known to be a mystical way to setting off certain vibrations in the air and if the theory holds up that everything is a matter of vibrations a certain amount of frequencies per second then everything has its own note and if we take Hamlet in that respect that. Each person has his own note and can be played upon then. Would it be of sufficient value in research and exploration to move into the vibrational area of experimenting with narcotic addicts on vibrational. They the structure of certain sounds and certain vowels you know there is the sound of our own which is a mystical about and it is thought to bring positive results when intoned in a certain way and on a certain level is there some relationship between what you're doing and this notion of this concept. There wasn't any conscious relation on my part in doing it. I was not approaching it from from the tonality of it but rather from the lyric that was elicited However I think it's a very interesting concept that you probably see. If you can find the money from their research to know. How you will get back to Dr Levy when you talk about money. And you know there's something that is interesting in an article from The New York Times. March sixty eight about the whole idea we've been discussing in the final paragraph from the office of poetry is important to stir because of the emotions it releases I think it was a quote from you right Dr Lee right and you said Remember many peptic ulcers are just poems struggling to be born and I think that's that's an interesting. Visual kind of statement and perhaps. There's a great deal of truth in that I mean I know. We read a lot about the relationship between our emotions in our diseases and. I guess that's the whole area of psychosomatic study. Where do you think this type of. Therapy will go and. Do you think it's going to fade out and. Go where all things go when they fade out or do you think there's really going to be some future before in a big way and in a very meaningful way for poetry therapy and I would ask you just tag onto that question the fact that you can dial a poll on these days seems that someone is heading in that direction. Well actually the book poetry therapy will introduce a new profession the poetry therapist. Who will achieve a masters degree in Poet be fair of me and there are even some people getting Ph D.'s in poetry therapy at N.Y.U. at dolling college formerly the at Delphi Suffolk branch of a dolphin University. By Dr Aaron Kramer will introduce the course of poetry therapy. And the New York State Division of Vocational Rehabilitation at the Post Graduate Center for Mental Health is now recognizing poetry therapy and actually paying poetry therapist to do poetry therapy Elizabeth Ferris part of that program. And we anticipate that. Throughout the United States and Mental Hygiene clinics mental hospitals guidance clinics. Teachers Penology just the clergy social workers nurses. Are now getting very interested in poetry therapy in any of the nurses training programs as part of their curriculum are. In various hospitals including Canada. And by the way there's been interest in even in Australia and I and there's a little psychiatrist in Nigeria who's working on a little paper and it's bringing the. The battles. But then there is much evidence for the direction that the poetry therapy may be taking it. As you catalogue and outline all of these possibilities and activities that are on the way. Out the possibility we have is that I only have five seconds we must close off but I want to thank our panel Dr Jack J. Levy Dr Eric Martin how it was a fair and up to something a child of a doctor a blind a man. You've been listening to Richard Pryor program manager of W. N.Y.C. Hi guests. Another special program of your city station's week long series on our cocks and narcotics addiction we welcome your comments address them to drug broadcasts that anyone Y.C. in New York one hundred zero zero seven this program was a special transcribed fit your your city station. 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