Endorphins and Poetry

In poetry workshops, I’ve often found myself commenting, “Writing keeps me sane.” According to the Cleveland Clinic, being in a creative state of mind releases endorphins, the “feel-good” chemicals that “attach to your brain’s reward centers (opioid receptors) and carry signals across your nervous system”. They “help relieve pain, reduce stress and improve your sense of well-being.”

Good, but how? What activates endorphins? Exercise is often first cited, followed by such initiators as meditation, sex, hot baths, friends, and even dark chocolate. For me, one answer is psychological. Partly, it’s a desire to discover order and meaning within the randomness, even chaos, of daily experience. But my poem-in-progress is more than its visible content. It awakens an old watchmaker’s fascination with the intricacies of the art. How can I tease the mechanism’s multiple coils and springs to set in motion what I am groping to say? What if I move line 2 lower, or sharpen the bird image, or smooth or jazz up the rhythm in stanza 3? In William Zinsser’s phrase, I am not learning to write, so much as “writing to learn”. Every adjustment triggers the revelation of yet another and another and another to explore, and the drafts pile up, 20, even 50, until I hear that first clear tick. Although I am happy for the finished poem, the endorphin high is what I crave most and drives me on in pursuit of the next.