Recipient insane: meds needed

April 26, 2013

from collage by Laura Kennedy

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

-Sylvia Plath

Oh, such a doomed woman,

but still,

I love Sylvia Plath.

She was doomed by her love for Ted Hughes

and doomed by her brain chemistry

that today doctors would want to fix.

And yet, I wonder:

Would she have been able to write

such passionate poetry

if she’d been “on meds?”

Real literary genius

takes more than a touch of madness

but that’s something we

“fix”

today.

Wondering who’s creating anything

this wonderfully wild

or if these days

all writers and poets

are numbed into oblivion?