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Creativity and Mood
October 21, 2009
Paul Muldoon poet, songwriter
Elizabeth Swados composer, poet, playwright

Poet and songwriter Paul Muldoon joins poet/playright Elizabeth Swados to explore the relationship between creativity and mood. For more than a century, artistic genius has been linked in the popular imagination with suffering, mental illness, and untimely death--as though creativity somehow rendered artists unfit for ordinary human life. Swados, who has detailed her own battles with bipolar disorder in print, and Muldoon, who wrote some of the haunting lyrics on Warren Zevon's last CD, reflect on this Romantic idea of artistic creativity.

Special thanks to Michael J. Kerpan, a visual arts student from UMass Boston, for providing this video.

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