One of the people I most admire, Leah, is a fellow blogger on ouralzheimers.com. Leah has vascular dementia. Through her blog posts, she provides us with a remarkable look into her world. Here, in "Poetry Promotes Mental Agility," Leah writes about one way she keeps her skills sharp:
"Since writing about my dementia dilemma, I have given considerable thought to the current process of exercising my mind. Because my communication skills are still good, I decided to go out of my comfort zone and exercise my mind in a new way: I will stretch it as I try my hand at writing poetry. (Note: Poetry has been an avenue for me to deal with the most stressful times of my life. I have not really written any for thirty years or more.)"
Leah is so right! Poetry does, indeed, keep the brain agile. As far as I know, I don't have any form of dementia (yet), but I've discovered that writing poetry in unusual forms is great fun. See my "Write Your Life!" blog for my rictameters. I'm even putting them into a book. They are not great art, but everyone should give writing poetry a try.
Posted by: Marlys Styne | Wednesday, 07 May 2008 at 06:11 AM