Poets often find death fascinating, and now a psychologist suggests a connection: While the authors on the whole die young, poets die even younger.

A new film biography of Sylvia Plath reinforces the image of the poet as meteorite flash brightly - and briefly - about the sky before burning out. Plath, who committed suicide at age 31, typified the short lives of other notable poets like John Keats who died of tuberculosis at 26, or Hart Crane, his life ended in 33rd

James C. Kaufman, Ph.D., from California State University at San Bernardino, writing in a recent edition of the journal Death Studies, combed through biographical reference works to find birth and death dates for 1987, poets, playwrights, novelists and non -- Fiction writers from North America, China, Turkey and Eastern Europe. He sorts the results by region, gender and literary specialty.

On average, non-fiction writers lived 67.9 years, novelists lived 66.0 years and 63.4 years dramatist. Poets on average only 62.2 years. The rankings were both male and female writers, although the women in each category are the men survived.

"Both male and female poets had the shortest lifespan of all four types of writers, and poets had the shortest lifespan in three of the four cultures," says Kaufman. Only in Eastern Europe have poets squeak past playwrights by a few months, and if this difference was not statistically significant.

What makes these differences in life expectancy? Kaufman advances several possible reasons. May poets die younger because they are more likely to suffer from mental illness, especially depression, which is a risk factor for suicide.

"Poetry May appeal to people who tend to be self-destructive," he says.

"I think Professor Kaufman is obviously gone," says former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, still lived five months longer than the average poet. "The club assumed the poet with mental disorders and depression is a romantic holdover."

Collins has his own hypothesis. "If poets really die sooner than other writers - and not notice it that much sooner - they do so because of the nature of poetry," says Collins, a professor at Lehman College, City University of New York, in an e-mail Interview. "Because poems are shorter (to say) than novels, books of non-fiction and plays, often the poet is back to zero. He faces the blank page on nearly a daily basis. Thus the poet experiences more stressful than in other literary writers Genres. And we know the connection between stress and mortality. "

"The fact that a Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton May, the young does not necessarily mean an introduction to poetry class should be a warning that poems can be a hazard to health," says Kaufman. The research, however, may stimulate poets and mental health professionals find a way to the occasional negative impact of writing poetry, he says.

Other researchers have said that poets who ultimately commit suicide May leave instructions in their writings.

In poems written throughout their careers, suicidal thoughts poets used significantly more first-person singular self-references ( "I", "me", "my") and a decrease in the first person plural words as a poet has not suicidal, a researcher Shannon W. Stirman and James W. Pennebaker wrote in 2001. They also tend to decrease their use of communication words (like "talk", "shares" and "hear") in the course of time, while non-suicidal poets displayed an opposing trend. For more information about the Stirman and Pennebaker study, see below.

Kaufman pointed out that poetry is lonely work. Non-fiction writer with sources or editors and writers deal with actors and directors, which means healthy contact with other people. Poets (at least in legend) scribble alone in unheated garrets, susceptible to both loneliness and infection.

Or perhaps the statistics mask the reality that poets produce more of their lifetime output when young, in comparison to other writers. Thus, they become notable enough to reference books in spite of premature deaths.

A poet, AE Housmans, who died at 77, wrote in immortally "To Athlete Dying Young" that there are some advantages to such a fate:
"Smart lad, to slip away betimes
Areas where fame does not remain,
And if the early laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose. "

Signs of suicidal tendencies found hidden in Dead Poets' Writings

An investigation of the use of certain words May Uncover hidden signs of suicidal tendencies in the poetry writer, according to new research.

"Suicidal poets are more detached from the others and with themselves busy," says Shannon Wiltsey Stirman, MA from the University of Pennsylvania. "Our research shows, as well as text-analysis can show characteristics of the font, possibly in connection with suicide and therefore could be useful in predicting suicide among poets."

Stirman and co-author James W. Pennebaker, Ph.D., of the University of Texas at Austin, pointed out that suicide rates are significantly higher than among the poets among other things, literary writers and the general population, although most poets not commit suicide. Many poets thoughts of suicide suffer from some form of depressive disorder throughout their lives, however.

The poets who ultimately committed suicide even more words in connection with the death than the non-suicide group.

The study is published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine

With text-analysis software, researchers compared the words used in 156 poems written by nine poets who committed suicide in order words, in 135 poems written by nine poets, not suicide.

The thoughts of suicide and not suicidal poet revealed as closely as possible by nationality, time, education and gender. All were American, British or Russian.

In poems written throughout their careers, the poet who committed suicide are significantly more first-person singular self-references (like "I", "I" and "my") and a decrease in the first person plural words than the non - suicidal poet.

Moreover, the suicidal poet tend to decrease their use of communication words (like "talk", "shares" and "hear") in the course of time, while the non-suicidal poets tend to increase their use of such terms.

Suicidal thoughts poet selected for the study were John Berryman, Hart Crane, Sergei Yessenin, Adam L. Gordon, Randall Jarrell, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Sylvia Plath, Sarah Teasdale and Anne Sexton. That showed the non-suicidal, including poet Matthew Arnold, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Kilmer, Denise Levertov, Robert Lowell, oSIP Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, Adrienne Rich and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health.