Course Details
Course offered Spring 2012
Honors 398 A: The Healing Power of Poetry (A&H)
Honors 398 A: The Healing Power of Poetry (A&H)
SLN 14445 (View UW registration info »)
Arthur Ginsberg (Classics)
Office: Classics, Box 353110
Phone: 2063694836
Email: arthurginsberg@msn.com
Office: Classics, Box 353110
Phone: 2063694836
Email: arthurginsberg@msn.com
Credits: 2
Limit: 12 students
Please note: for students completing the new Honors curriculum, this course does NOT fulfill core requirements, but will instead count as elective credit. Students completing the old curriculum will receive credit toward their seminar requirement.
This honors seminar seeks to explore the interface between poetry and the healing arts. In an age when technology dominates our daily experience, the emotional parameters of illness are often overlooked. The human brain has not changed in the last ten thousand years in its need for expression surrounding fear and grief. We will discuss the limbic system and correlates of functional MRI in understanding patterns of brain activation. Students will start by acquiring basic poetic craft and techniques to bring music and emotion into language. The history of poetry in medicine will be examined: its value in retrospective reflection, as a tool for teaching compassion to medical students, and as a vehicle for expression in mentally and physically afflicted patients. Distinguished physician-poets will be discussed and each student will participate in socalization of a selection of these poems. Examples of cross cultural traditions of poetry will be briefly reviewed. Each student will be required to generate “in-class” writing as well as writing assignments, and to create 2 poems; one about personal experience of illness or injury, the second about an illness sustained by a friend or loved one that has affected the student’s life. An editor, co-editor and “tech” production advisor will be chosen by the class to produce a 30 page book of poetry for publication by the university by the end of the seminar. A group reading at the HUB or University Bookstore, in which all students will participate will substitute for a final examination. My role will be as
facilitator and guide to provoke thought and to generate innovative poems.
facilitator and guide to provoke thought and to generate innovative poems.