Probing the Emotions of Elderly Patients With Poetry Therapy : Health: Verses help put ailing seniors in touch with buried feelings.

It was a tough audience.

Some fell asleep, others fell out of their chairs. A few got up and left just when the show got exciting. Most sat with blank expressions on their faces.

A man in a worn fedora ambled around the room, reading from rumpled sheets of poetry. At first glance, he appeared to be entertaining the group. But his real purpose was to pump some mental electricity through the degenerated nerve channels and faltering neurotransmitters of the members of his audience.

This was a session in poetry therapy, used to probe the buried emotional lives of elderly subjects suffering the effects of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and heart disease and stroke. They are participants in an experiment that uses verse to jump-start failed memories and awaken dormant feelings.

Each Friday afternoon, poet Arthur Lerner bundles up a few Manila folders full of inspiration and heads for St. Joseph Adult Day Health Center in Burbank. The center serves seniors with major health needs who live at home, but who require outside professional day care.

“Our aim is not to make poets, but to allow people to express themselves in a meaningful and appropriate way,” said Lerner, 75, of Los Angeles, who also is director of poetry therapy at Van Nuys Hospital. “We try to get them to enjoy and open up to a point where they can relate--anything to reach the level of their feeling and understanding.”

Lerner, who has had four books of his own poems published, has run the poetry therapy program at the health center on a volunteer basis for the past year and a half.

On a recent Friday, about 30 participants, many using wheelchairs, walkers and canes, made their way to a recreation room where Lerner and two assistants sifted through stacks of poetry. Some participants fine-tuned their hearing aids in preparation for Lerner’s booming voice. Others joined in a group reading of a W.H. Auden poem: “In the deserts of the heart/Let the healing fountain start. . . .”

A few stared at a large blackboard that read: “Today is Thursday, January 11th, 1990.”

Throughout the session, Lerner approached participants, asking them what feelings were conjured up by verses that he or other seniors read. The poems ran a literary gamut--from poems by Frost, Dickinson, Laotzu and Blake to limericks and ditties:

My father owns the butcher shop

My mother cuts the meat,

And I’m the little hot dog

That runs around the street.

“Oh! I used to recite that when I was 6 years old!” said Dorothy Buth, 80, who lives in Burbank and attends the center to help with an ailing heart. “When my mother had company, I used to recite it for them.”

“What happened, dear? Did you get a lot of laughs?” asked Lerner.

“Yes, I’m sure they laughed at me a lot,” she said, jokingly.

Lerner makes no claims about poetry’s ability to mend his patients, but he feels that enjoyment of the art can increase their awareness of their surroundings and can help improve the quality of life for those coping with debilitating illnesses. There is little research on the effectiveness of poetry therapy, which is recognized along with art, music and dance as a creative art therapy.

But, Lerner said, he sees changes in his patients. “Through the simple process of remembering and feeling, they begin to know they’re alive again. And that’s some measure of their worth.”

Most participants don’t compose poems, but many have warm memories of verses learned through the years, Lerner said, adding that this common experience helps in the therapeutic process.

“I used to spend hours and hours in the evening, reading poems to my daughter while she went to sleep,” said Sadie Topper, 90, of North Hollywood.

Topper, whose speech is impaired from a stroke suffered three years ago, said, “It was very bad, after the stroke. I love poetry. People, you know, speak words, but people don’t hear the words--beautiful words.”

A member of the St. Joseph staff said poetry therapy was responsible for a turning point in Topper’s struggles to cope with post-stroke depression and the multitude of life style changes the stroke brought on.

“She had really withdrawn into herself after the stroke,” said Kathryn David, director of the center. “Through the poetry, she’s really come out of her shell and now she talks more and shares her feelings in the group. It’s hard to quiet her down now. She just talks all the time.

“Everyone really enjoys the groups because Dr. Lerner doesn’t just read a poem--he teaches from it and reflects and delves deeply into what the poet was trying to say. He’s very positive, very dynamic.”

Ken Gorelick, president of the National Assn. for Poetry Therapy in Washington, D.C., added, “Art does very solid work. He has a special knack for inspiring people and encouraging them to open up.”

The association, of which Lerner was once president, has certified 75 poetry therapists who are trained to give sessions similar to those Lerner holds. About 3,000 other therapists in the country use poetry as part of their treatment programs, Gorelick said, adding that only a few work with an ailing elderly population.

For Lerner, work with the elderly has capped a career spent promoting poetry therapy, first at Woodview-Calabasas Hospital, where he worked for 16 years with psychiatric patients as director of poetry therapy and poet-in-residence. For the past 12 years, Lerner has worked with similar patients at Van Nuys Hospital.

“He is a very important part of the treatment team at this facility,” said Alan Hull, chief executive officer at Van Nuys Hospital. “He does an excellent job with his poetry therapy group.”

Lerner, a licensed therapist for 40 years, is also a professor emeritus at Los Angeles City College and founder, in 1972, of the Poetry Therapy Institute in Encino, which trains therapists and others in poetry therapy.

Poetry therapy has been around since Aristotle wrote his “Poetics,” but the modern-day emphasis on it began in 1969, with the publication of New York psychologist Jack Leedy’s groundbreaking book, “Poetry Therapy.” Lerner carried the momentum to the West Coast, writing “Poetry in the Therapeutic Experience” in 1978.

Lerner’s work with ailing seniors began as a kind of repayment to a St. Joseph surgeon who patched up an aneurysm for Lerner in 1987.

“I felt he saved my life,” said Lerner of the surgeon, Dr. Leopoldo Dulawa. “It’s my way of repaying him.”

Some of Lerner’s prize pupils at St. Joseph--those who have made extraordinary strides in elevating their self-esteem--often sit next to him during the sessions.

Bill Vosper, 72, who suffered a stroke four years ago, has attended Lerner’s sessions since they began.

“I’ve been reading and writing poetry since I was 14,” said Vosper, adding that he wrote most of his poems in the South China Sea, while stationed there in the Air Force. “I enjoy it and share memories here--we all have similar experiences.”

Vosper, who lives in Burbank, began writing poetry again after attending Lerner’s group. Now, a gold-stamped, handmade book of his poems makes the rounds during and after the sessions. The book, a compilation of past and current poems, includes “Love Thief,” “Love Flame,” “People Lock” and “Heavenly Graffiti,” among other works.

At the conclusion of the session, Lerner asked members of the group how they felt about what was discussed during the hour.

“It’s been real down to earth, and it hasn’t taken too much concentration,” said Hal Voigt, 85.

“I like it very much,” said Topper, spreading her arms. “It’s like a song.”

“There’s never been a dull moment,” said Matt McArdle, 73. “Of course, at times I have fallen asleep.”

Lerner asked the members of the group to give themselves some applause. For closure, Lerner asked group members to join hands as he led them in a poem by Edwin Markham:

He drew a circle that shut me out--

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,

But love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in.