A Mind Apart: Poems of Melancholy, Madness, and Addiction

by Mark S. Bauer

"Much madness is divinest sense," wrote Emily Dickinson, "And much sense the starkest madness." The idea that poetry and madness are deeply intertwined, and that madness sometimes leads to the most divine poetry, has been with us since antiquity. In his critical and clinical introduction to this splendid anthology--the first of its kind--psychiatrist and poet Mark S. Bauer considers mental disorders from multiple perspectives and challenges us to broaden our outlook. He has selected more than 200 poems from across seven centuries that reflect a wide range mental states--from despondency and despair to melancholy, mania, and complete submersion into a world of heightened, original perception. Featuring such poets as George Herbert, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Ann Sexton, Weldon Kees, Lucille Clifton, Jane Kenyon, and many others, A Mind Apart has much to offer those who suffer from mental illness, those who work to understand it, and all those who value the poetry that has come to us from the heights and depths of human experience.

Genres: Poetry

432 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2008

Reviews

[Lillian Shuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book, long awaited, unlike any other anthology. Here are poets who all have pain and relief in common, and poems that can directly teach us how to cope with our own pain and empathize with sorrows of others.

[T.D. Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a reader of poetry anthologies, I like to begin the book with an understanding of the editor's purpose in assembling the collection. In A Mind Apart: Poems of Melancholy, Madness, and Addiction, editor Mark S. Bauer provides a map of psychiatric research on the book's subject and a guide on how to view the poems in light of those frameworks. In spite of this strong introduction, once I began reading the poems, I kept asking myself who this book is for. Perhaps it's the arrangement of the poems, which are presented in chronological order. I found myself getting bogged down in the older work, and it wasn't until I reached the more modern work that I was drawn back into the book. (I've read a fair bit of pre-1900 poetry, but my area of focus in my studies was poetry of the 20th century, so I'll admit my bias here. I think it's also fair to say that the subject matter weighs on the reader, be prepared for that, too.) Bauer gives us categories ("melancholy," "sweet melancholy," "madness and reason," etc.), and the older work might have been more compelling to a lay reader to give us the chronological order within those categories, but many of the poems don't lend themselves to clear categorization, I'll grant. There is a good balance of insider and outsider poems in the book, as well as popular song lyrics. Overall, I'd say this book succeeds in what the editor set out to create, and recommend this anthology to anyone interested in the connection of mental illness and poetry, though I would say don't feel compelled to read in the order the poems are presented.

[Katherine Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good selection of poetry, contains some of my favourite poems but also now have a few new poet's work to explore thanks to this book.

[Jeff Holt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite poetry anthology. Absolutely essential.