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Exploring lyric, epic, and dramatic voices: Stages of incandescence in the poetry of the aged

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Journal of Poetry Therapy

Abstract

Relative to Jungian therapist Kane's finding that retrieval of imagination indicates healing, this study explores what happens between the poet's images, which draw us outside ourselves, and the poet's lyric, epic, and dramatic voices, which not only guide us between imagination and self, but allow new relationships to form between self and psyche. True relationships between psyche and lyric, epic, and dramatic voices are identified and discussed as they unweave unwholesome relationships and engage the elderly's power to create images—to recover imagination. Ways lyric-epic-dramatic voice relationships can be used diagnostically and to document growth are suggested.

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Reed, M.A. Exploring lyric, epic, and dramatic voices: Stages of incandescence in the poetry of the aged. J Poetry Ther 5, 197–218 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01072780

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